208 Transition

Last Sunday, my 85-year-old mother fell after trying to clean a window in her bedroom. She sustained a nasty gash to her leg. She was lucky. It could just as easily have been a broken hip or a head injury. Now she has to visit her GP three times a week to have the dressing changed.

Two days earlier I’d visited her, done her shopping, and completed paperwork for her aged care support. My mum has mobility issues and needs help at home with basic tasks like making the bed, vacuuming, and cleaning floors. We spoke about the need to be patient.

This story is a reminder that action has a cost. And as we age, the margin for error shrinks.

When it comes to older adults, you can understand why they take these risks. They are processing loss, loneliness, frustration — or they simply don’t want to bother their children.

Organisational change should be different.

And yet I’ve worked with many leaders who — metaphorically — insist on cleaning the windows without assistance. They fail to pause and calculate the consequences of their actions on themselves and others – the ripple effect of any action on a complex and adaptive system.

Impatience. Vanity. Impetuosity.

How else do you explain change programs that fail to account for employee wellbeing? That overlook co-design? That lock in unrealistic deadlines? That elevate tactics over strategy? Preferencing transactions over trust.

In organisations, the fall is rarely immediate — but it is just as real: burnout, disengagement, avoidable conflict, attrition, rework, and the slow erosion of credibility. In some cases, trauma.

I gave my mum Gallwey’s STOP tool:

Step back. Think. Organise your thoughts. Proceed.

It’s short, accessible, and it fortifies the thinking behind the urge to act. Activity should be built on awareness. There’s a reason that at 52 I no longer climb ladders.

Every organisational change should apply a tool like STOP before making its move.

Step back. As change leaders, pause with colleagues and employees and clarify the real need for change. What context are we operating in? Is this a response to an existential threat — or to impatience? What has been tried before? What legacy from previous changes is still living in people’s bodies and attitudes?

Think. Process what you are hearing and seeing. Compare with other organisations. Check and re-check the information to establish what is factual, what is political, and what is assumed. Let time do some of its work.

Organise your thoughts. Rarely are we facing a binary choice between “all-out change” and “no change.” What options exist between those extremes? What is the information — and the passage of time — telling you? Test your thinking. Change leadership is not a solo sport.

Proceed. Not in a linear way. Movement is uneven and should be guided by feedback. Circumstances shift. New information emerges. Unintended consequences appear. Flexibility is not weakness — it is discipline.

Speed feels like leadership.

Process and patience are leadership.

Where in your organisation are people cleaning windows and putting themselves at risk?