Erase or embrace?

I came across (special thanks to my boss for sharing it with me) another great blog post by Korn Ferry CEO Gary Burnison, "Erase or Embrace?"  Burnison talked about one of his favorite college professors, who happened to teach geology.  When I first started reading the post, I had to ask myself, "What in the world does geology have to do with leadership?"  Well, stay tuned.

As it turns out, this particular professor used to write out very long and detailed notes on the chalkboard during his lectures.  I know that chalkboards are a thing of the past, but that's how college professors used to deliver their lectures!  Anyway, Burnison's geology professor would fill up the chalkboard with notes, and as he did so, his clothes, hands, face, and mouth would get covered in chalk dust.  Burnison said, "Every time he said the words metamorphic rock or tectonic shifts, a sea of white dust showered the first row of students."

When the chalkboard became completely filled with notes, the professor would grab the chalk eraser and erase all the old notes and then start completely over with new notes.  Now, for those of us who are old enough to remember chalkboards, we will know that erasing chalkboards never completely eliminated the old writing.  No matter how much swiping you would do with the eraser, the old writing always showed through, making it nearly impossible to decipher the writing that came afterwards.  

Burnison suggests that as leaders, we deal with the same issue - "operating at the intersection of past and present" as he calls it.  He then asks a rhetorical question, "So, is it time to erase - or embrace?  The answer is yes!"

In other words, we should both embrace the past and look to the future.  It's not so much as an "either/or" but a "both/and" answer.  As Burnison writes, "We need to erase what's holding us back so we can embrace what moves us forward.  It's like the dichotomy we find in the old saying - the same boiling water that hardens the egg softens the potato."

In our turbulent and chaotic world, organizations (and their leaders) must continually adapt.  Flexibility and agility is absolutely essential.  Burnison suggests, "As leaders we need to ask ourselves: Are we keepers of the past, ambassadors of the present, or emissaries of the future?  Are we simply historians of what was - or heralds of what will be?"  The answer is that we need to be all of it.  We can't be stuck in the past, but we also can't ignore it either.  We have to be ready for the future, but we can't lose sight of how we got here in the first place.  As I've said before, the need for change doesn't have to be an indictment on the past.