FollowtheLeader.indd

LEADERS ARE PRECIPITATORS

responded to a need or crisis – and in the process became the catalyst for
needed change. Their leadership caused them to become the precipitator and
initiator of reformation in society.

Leaders who are reformers rather than conformers...innovators rather than
imitators have learned that change does not come easily! It is basic to human
nature to resist change – to cling to the status quo. That tends to be true
individually, maritally, or organizationally. Every leader who leads change
has learned this principle: Significant change seldom takes place easily. The
greater the change – the greater the resistance to change. Lasting significant
change usually comes more through gradual evolution, rather than through
sudden revolution. In his excellent book, Leading Change, Harvard’s John
Kotter reminds leaders:

Real transformation takes time...Never underestimate the

magnitude of the forces that reinforce complacency and that help

maintain the status quo...Major change takes time, sometimes lots

of time.^7

Leaders who want to be significant change agents – rather than superficial
change agents – must have a “long haul” mentality. They have to traverse
the organizational or ecclesiastical “canyon of complacency,” as Kotter calls
it. Any hiker knows that no great canyon is crossed quickly or easily. The
greater the size of the canyon – the greater the effort and the longer the
time required to get through it. Many people become overwhelmed by the
enormity of the challenge, and quit before they ever start. But any leader
worth his salt and sweat knows that every journey must begin with a
first step – regardless of how difficult or painful. Leaders that live and last
never try to jump the “canyon of change” with one LARGE single bound!
If they do, they will usually “crash and burn!” No, first survey the size
and difficulty of the challenge – and then attack it one step at a time.
They will first begin to work for the small short-term changes that will
pave the way for the larger and harder changes. One becomes the stepping-
stones for the other, rather than stumbling blocks – or tombstones!

At the end of the day, every leader fully realizes that there is risk involved
in every major change. The greater the change – the greater the risk! The
risk factor is one of the great divides between leaders and followers. The
risk barrier is really a fear barrier that every leader has to break through