What if the platforms are always burning?

There’s a classic thought experiment in change management called a burning platform.

From a 1993 book by Daryl R. Conner called “Managing at the Speed of Change”, it describes a situation in which maintaining the status quo is so costly, so detrimental to the business, that the level of resolve to change becomes a no-brainer. The metaphor Conner uses is is a literal platform on fire: you have to jump, because the status quo means certain death.

The problem with this metaphor for leaders from the perspective of 2020:

All of our platforms are on fire. There is no safe ground left on which to take a breath.

It’s increasingly unclear where we should jump even if we had the resolve to do so. The ground underneath us is shifting too quickly.

But the biggest problem with the metaphor is the negative framing. Change sticks around when people are excited about it, not when they feel like they’re standing on a cliff moments away from expiration.

How would we operate differently if we saw transformation as an infinite set of opportunities rather than a fire we have to outrun? And how would we manage it differently if we embraced the ambiguity of where we have to land, and focused on creating resilient, fire-proof leaders?

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