This isn't a recession. Recession implies recovery. There will be no recovery. This is a reset.
That's what Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, told the folks who attended the Cannes Lion International Advertising Festival last week. Ballmer was talking specifically about the advertising business. But leaders in every field ought to be listening, too. So much is changing and has already changed in our culture. If you think you can just tweak your way to the other side of it all, you're probably wrong.
Too many of the leaders we're observing today are still tweaking.
Take the news business. Ballmer predicts that within 10 years all news content will be digital. Is he right? We'll see. But there is no question that fewer and fewer people get their news in print or on the small screen. They get it online, on their laptops, on their I-Phones, on their Crackberries. How is the news business responding? Are they embracing some big new paradigm shift? No. They're trying to figure out how to do what they've always done with less money so that the investors keep making the same amount of money they've always made. They're tweaking. Shrinking the size of the paper they print on. Downsizing their staff. Breaking the unions in order to reduce salaries & benefits. Kirk Lapoint, managing editor of the Vancouver Sun, writes a blog that tracks the changing news business. And it's not pretty.
Sound anything like an industry you care about?
The automobile industry? The airlines?
How about the church???
We thought so.
Every Tuesday morning the team here at A.R.E. spends an hour on the phone together in "centering time." This morning we reflected on the TED presentation by Jacek Ukto, a young Polish-born designer who is being credited with turning around the newspaper business in multiple western and eastern European nations. He offers up a key to the kind of "resetting" Ballmer is calling for. Car makers...airline execs...news jockies...church leaders...listen up: Meaningful change begins when you start asking purposeful questions.
Do you need to "reset"? Start with questions like these: Why are we here? What are we trying to accomplish? What is the point?!? People who are courageous and smart enough to spend time really wrestling with these questions together find that they come out so committed to their common purpose that they are willing to do whatever it takes and change whatever needs changing in order to achieve it. They don't get stuck on doing things "the way we've always done them." They don't argue about stupid things that don't matter. Their traditions, rituals, rules, etc. take a back seat to their common goals. They aren't satisfied with tweaking.
Real change begins with asking the right questions. But doing that doesn't come naturally or easily. One of our teammates remarked this morning that even Jesus' followers, in the last moments they had with him, wanted to know, "But when are you going to restore Israel?! When are you going to kick out the Romans?!? When are you going to fix our problems?!?" One of the final things he said to them was, "Guys! You're not asking the right questions!" (Acts 1)
If the business, school, hospital, agency, or church you care about is in need of a "reset," you probably need to spend some time - and probably a LOT of time - wrestling together with the right questions.
Let us know if you need help.
Watch Ukto's TED speech here...and watch till the end when he reflects on things he's learned from this turn around miracle:
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