The Beat of the Drum – How to complete real change in a time critical environment

How we conclude change in difficult times can learn a lot both from History and Electronics. Often the euphoria of getting past the inertia of deciding to change is replaced by a dread of how to actually complete it. Text books will say once you have a burning platform, build a coalition and advance. Easy to say, often enthusiasm will get you started, but complete it…

Compare this to an army hundreds of years ago that is faced with having to advance and take an enemy position. It needed all the units to do their job no matter what is thrown at them together. If each unit had thought and acted independently then the whole operation would have failed. The success of the mission needed all units to advance, no matter what and together. The simple answer, a drum beat. On every beat of the drum we go forward no matter what the consequence and this also dictates our speed.

Compare this to change. You spend a short or long time planning. You get started and then you meet the real issues. Some areas slow, some stop, other are left waiting. Overall inertia begins to set in, slowly almost unnoticeable at first. Quickly you realise benefits are being lost, the initiative is lost and although on paper you may complete the mission the benefits are not really realised. How did that happen?

You let people think too long and hard. Circumstances overtake you. Imagine if the soldiers on the battlefield had done this – chaos and defeat. Not too different then. In these difficult times, if radical change is not achieved, it can be just as dangerous and people may not survive professionally as companies fold.

So what we are really saying is change in difficult times may require a beat of a drum for things to happen, not negotiable and a clarity of deliveries to every drum beat (time period).

Is there another analogy for this way of operating? The answer is synchronous electronic circuits. Imagine this scenario in the computer that you are reading this on now. The brain (processor) asks its memory for some information it has stored. It then looks the other way at the very moment the information is provided. It asks again and this time it is successful, though irritated that it did not get it quicker, as the screen it wanted to display it on is also not ready now. The result?  The benefit of the operation fails to deliver. This is called asynchronous operation, each component waiting on the other with no relationship agreed to get things done.

In reality you are reading this screen because the computer has a drum beat called a clock pulse. All its actions happen on a falling or rising edge of a continuous pulse. Therefore they are forever changing their states together at the speed of the pulse. (Now you know why newer faster computers quotes processor speeds !!)

Change in difficult times requires a different approach. It is not possible to take all people with you, as for their own good, action is required and all benefits need delivering urgently. There are many techniques to implement “Beat of the drum” for both personal and company change. If these are not adopted as the implementation style then you may be marching to the beat of someone else’s drum, not something we as leaders or individuals truly desire.

One word of warning with this approach – ensure feedback is acted upon. Advance but in the right direction !