The One Thing Great Leaders Never Say

“Change is hard, but dying is worse”

The most taboo phrase of leadership repeated several times, the one thing great leaders never say: We’ve always done it that way.

Can you relate? How many times have you been working on a project or trying to update or enhance a process within your organization just to hear, “No, that won’t work. We have to keep it this way because it’s how we’ve always done it.”

If you’re honest with yourself, I’m sure you’ve been guilty of saying the same thing from time to time. I know I have, but it is something I had to train myself to eliminate from my speech over time. The problem with this phrase is that it immediately squashes the innovation process. It inherently kills whatever you are trying to do.

Think about the world of social media. Five years ago, many companies shut the door on social media thinking they didn’t need it, it was just a temporary trend that would die overnight and there were too many regulatory or public relations issues with it. Now that most people have adopted the big social media sites like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn into their organizations, they are resistant to understand new technologies like Snapchat or Periscope.

I don’t know exactly how or if our organization will adopt these new technologies either, but I can tell you that the moment our creative team was alerted to these sites we immediately had an impromptu brainstorming session about all of the ways we could leverage it to further our brands. Our muscle-memory response has to be to remain open to new ideas and innovations.

Look at the classic example of Blockbuster versus Netflix. Blockbuster thought mailing DVDs to people’s homes was ridiculous. They were certain that customers enjoyed the experience of driving to the store and walking up and down 20 different aisles to find the one movie their families could agree upon. Blockbuster liked the status quo and wasn’t interested in dedicating the resources or pursuing the logistics of managing inventory and navigating the postal system. Today, Blockbuster is completely out. Netflix is in – and not only because they innovated to snail mail DVD delivery 10 years ago, but because they continue to innovate and now lead in streaming technologies as well.

In my opinion there is not a more dangerous phrase in leadership than to say, “We’ve always done it that way; there’s no reason to change.” I implore all leaders to work on eliminating that sentence from their speech and eliminating that thought process from their minds. Change is hard, but dying is worse. As a leader, you’ve got to build a team around you that embraces change if you’re going to stay viable in your mission.

����