194 Leading with NLP
Yes, the school was doing its best, yes, teachers were doing
their best. His daughter was coping with it as best she could.
But nothing was changing and the situation was intolerable.
So he took his daughter away from that school. He held the
school responsible but not to blame for the situation.
Systems can be infuriating. Procedures which have the in-
tention of making things easy can be used to frustrate and
limit us. Everyone has their horror story about the perils of
bureaucracy. Systems may work in an impersonal way, but in
the end, people are responsible for making them work the
way they do. The paradox is that the focus of your feeling,
the hapless person who fills a place in the system, can prob-
ably do little to change it. Understanding the way systems
work can make sure that the energy and feeling you have can
be directed to the right place to change the system.
Change and Balance
The leader’s work is change and there are two sorts of
change. The first is change in the system – the kind of
change you need to make to stay the same. This is like keep-
ing your balance. Balance does not mean trying to keep
absolutely still and rigid, if you did, you would topple over.
Balance means always making small adjustments, changing
your position slightly all the time. Your body, for instance,
may seem the same, but it is constantly renewing itself. A
year from now, over 90 per cent of the atoms in your body
will be different. In business, people leave, new people ar-
rive, a company shifts and changes, yet in some way it is still
the same company. The longer it has been established, the
more it will have changed, yet paradoxically, the more stable
it will appear. Change gives stability.
The other kind of change is change ofthe system. This sec-
ond order change means finding a new balance point, and
involves deeper and wider change. An organization needs to
change to survive; it needs to evolve and adapt to the chang-
ing market. This change may be gradual or drastic.