Why the Road to Transformation Can Be Surprising

Issue 189, December 5, 2024

Transformation is not a straight line. If you’re a sailor, you tack to the future unless you have a full tailwind. If you’re the turtle, you can out-navigate the hare. If you are the architect of your career, you use the career portfolio strategy to build a professional life on your terms. If you are a well-being advisor (think Deepak Chopra), you could redefine the perception of physical, emotional and psychological stress as the resistance to existence; and if you don’t resist existence, you have flow. And if you are a proponent of flow, you know that transformation is not a straight line. It is nuanced, surprising and nonlinear.

Changing the Narrative

We have often written about the virtue of taking a pause, the shortsightedness of short-term gain, and the hazard of subconscious and conscious bias in leadership. The American business imperative is to grow bigger and better than the competition as fast as possible. How you get there is a matter of debate. Li…