Leading Through Resistance

Andrew Zolli has made a life of studying the impact of disruption and change on a global scale. Having worked on, studied, and written about initiatives on climate change, human rights, and disaster response, he and his coauthor Ann Marie Healy observed different cultures and conditions “from the coral reefs of Palau to the back streets of Palestine, exploring the dynamics of resilience in many contexts.”[1] In a time when there are many discussions and definitions of resilience, I find Zolli and Healy’s definition compelling. Resilience is the “capacity . . . to maintain . . . core purpose and integrity in the face of dramatically changed circumstances.”[2]

Zolli and Healy help us understand that the real challenge of dramatically changed circumstances is how something of genuine value comes under threat. Crisis doesn’t just cause disruption to preferences and peripheral things, but to the very reason for being—our core purpose and integrity. Therefore, to be resilient and to respond to “dramatically changed circumstances,” good leaders first determine what is worth preserving no matter the circumstances.

Because of this, whenever my team begins working with an organization on change, we often start in an unexpected place: What should never change. For many of these most energetic and eager change-leaders, this is a disappointment. They want to jump right in with new ideas. They want to “think outside the box,” “upset the apple cart,” and “make the future.” They are stymied by the suggestion that the place to start is by conserving the core purpose and core values of the sometimes-distant past. I like to paraphrase of a statement made famous by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras: “Once you are clear on what will never change, you then must be prepared to change everything else.”[3]

To do this we must start with a dual conviction: a preservation conviction and a change conviction.

1. The preservation conviction is that all change efforts will protect and maintain what is central to the organizational mission (“core purpose”) and the values that make it unique (“integrity”).
2. The change conviction is that change is necessary in order to protect the core purpose and integrity of our organization and that everyone must be prepared to adapt that purpose and integrity in a new strategic direction.

For Zolli and Healy, the key to resilience that maintains “core purpose and integrity” in a disruptive world is adaptive capacity (the same quality that Heifetz, Linsky, and Grashow teach is necessary for intentionally leading change to respond to that world). As they explain, “preserving adaptive capacity—the ability to adapt to changed circumstances while fulfilling one’s core purpose—[is] an essential skill in an age of unforeseeable disruption and volatility.”[4] Or in the words of Marty Linsky, “Adaptive work is as much about deciding what is essential and what needs to be brought forward as it is about what needs to be left behind.”[5]

Leading change, then, does not begin in change, but in what will not change. Then, when we begin to initiate a necessary change process, it should be framed as something that is not only consistent with our core purpose and the integrity of our values, but necessary to preserve them and see them flourish.

Here are some examples:

➜ A restaurant known for its delicious food and welcoming environment in a close-knit neighborhood figures out how to offer takeout and delivery during a pandemic because of their commitment to the community and their value of being a positive source of encouragement in it.

➜ A church that is committed to truly loving its neighbors as an expression of Christian values begins to teach Spanish language classes so that the longtime members can strike up friendships with the growing immigrant population in the neighborhood.

➜ A nonprofit focused on helping kids learn to read begins to utilize technological tools in an effort to both connect to kids who are otherwise playing video games and communicating via smart phone and allow more adults to create relationships with students who may be uncomfortable at first to meet in-person with a stranger.

The strategies might change, but the dual conviction for bringing that change is that every new initiative will be both 1) consistent with the organizational purpose and values and 2) necessary for ensuring that the organizational purpose and values continue in a challenging and disruptive world.

[1] Andrew Zolli, “About Me,” andrewzolli.com, n.d., https://andrewzolli.com /about-me/.

[2] Andrew Zolli and Ann Marie Healy, Resilience: Why Things Bounce Back (New York: Free Press, 2021), 7 (italics original).

[3] “Contrary to popular wisdom, the proper first response to a changing world is not to ask, ‘How should we change?’ but rather to ask, ‘What do we stand for and why do we exist?’ This should never change. And then feel free to change everything else.” Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras, Built to Last, 3rd ed., Good to Great book 2 (New York: HarperBusiness, 2011), loc. 79, Kindle.

[4] Zolli and Healy, Resilience, 8.

[5] Marty Linsky, “Pushing Against the Wind,” Faith & Leadership, September 27, 2010, www.faithandleadership.com/marty-linsky-pushing-against-wind.