When you’re at sea, the only thing that comes fast is trouble.
~ Roy Cano- sailor, and a dear late friend.
In the 19th century, about 60 nation states and cities were unified to create the new kingdom of Italy. One of the statesmen, Massimo d'Azeglio, said: “We have made Italy. Now we need to make Italians.”
One of the hardest things about leading transformation in organizations is having people feel part of the change and move together in a coordinated way. According to McKinsey research, 72% of transformations fail due to lack of management support (33%) and employee resistance (39%).
A popular belief is that you need to create a sense of urgency for change to be successful. That the faster the change, the better. When people don’t keep up, we complain that they are resisting - so we push some more. A fintech startup executive I spoke with recently described this well:
We do everything with a lot of anxiety and dopamine. I am impatient. I want everything to happen now. I get more done when I put pressure on people. Most of my energy goes to maintaining this. And that drains me.
Urgency drains energy from change
Urgency adds friction to change. When people rush, they are less likely to collaborate and help each other. In the well-known Good Samaritan experiment , theology students were told they needed to walk to another building to give a talk. On the way, they all came across a man slumped against a wall and dressed in poor clothing. Students who were not in a hurry helped 63% of the time. Only 10% of the students who were in a big hurry helped.
Urgency makes us lose track of our vision and our best intentions. Theranos is an extreme example of this, where employees were pressured to rush out blood-testing devices that were unreliable, and blasted for not working hard enough.
Urgency increases pressure to perform, which in general compromises our learning and creativity, decreases productivity and generates workplace dissatisfaction. Several companies have been investing in and providing resources to employees to increase resilience, wellbeing and mental health. But that does not solve the root cause: that capitalism feeds off a sense of urgency in the first place. It is our responsibility as leaders to bring in a more fundamental shift in consciousness.
The problem is, we confuse urgency with being fast. We either forgot or never really learned that, paraphrasing choreographer Ohad Naharin, we can move fast with a sense of plenty of time. You can lead change so that it is a meaningful and even joyful experience, despite being difficult. But you won’t learn how to do that from the business world- we already know it’s fixated on urgency. You need to step outside for new insights and skills. In my case, I found them in flamenco dance.
Rhythm organizes chaos
A live flamenco performance is typically made of three artist with very different skills: a guitarist, a singer and a dancer. We usually do not rehearse ahead of time, and it’s not uncommon you’re performing with people you’ve never worked with before. If you’ve heard of the three body problem, you will recognize this as a complex dynamical system, where chaos and unpredictability are high. The perfect training ground for navigating complex change.
The glue that holds everything together during a live performance is rhythm, or compas, as we call it in flamenco. It is indeed a compass. You can break all rules in flamenco except one: being in rhythm. Whenever I get lost in the chaos if a live performance, priority number one is to drop anything else I’m doing and find my way back.
Flamenco has a reputation for being fast and busy, but watch closely and you’ll notice that the rhythm stays stable most of the time. It’s the contrast between the movements, the oscillation of high and lows in the music, and turn taking between the artists that makes a performance rich and sustainable. If I were doing strong footwork the whole time, I would burnout. And the audience would get bored, overwhelmed.
So who sets the rhythm, you ask? The guitarist, the singer or the dancer? Well, it’s everyone, and no-one. It’s distributed leadership at its best. We all create the rhythm, and we all follow it. When we are synchronized, rhythm becomes an entity unto itself.
Synchrony as a natural and powerful tool for change
Everyone has rhythm, and everyone synchronizes- even if they are not dancers or musicians.
Human beings spontaneously coordinate nervous system, brain and hormonal activity in the presence of each other- this is called interpersonal synchrony. There is also a natural, mutual adaptation in language, emotion, and movement. These processes happen in close relationships and also with strangers.
Heart rate (HR) synchronization has been identified as a positive aspect of dual and group relationships. In the right social context - such as being part of a crowd in a live sports event- this HR synchrony is associated with deep bonding, a phenomenon scientists call identity fusion.
We learn this skill early. It is present in voice and movement variations in parent-infant interactions, one of the building blocks of attachment and social development. Some studies have even found that babies know how to feel the beat and notice when it changes.
What makes synchrony so powerful is that it feels good. Rhythm is a very hard thing to resist. We are unconsciously pulled towards it. Try listening to a song but keep a different beat with your finger. It’s like rubbing your belly and tapping the top of your head at the same time, it feels unnatural and we have to work hard to execute.
Rhythm is healing. According to Deb Dana, an author and leading trauma therapist, one of the most effective ways to help people who are in a state of high stress and emotionality (which I have often observed in organizational change) and get back to a state of connection, creativity and curiosity is rhythmic movement. For two reasons: rhythmic movement helps to contain the disorganized energy, and it also helps people co-regulate each other’s nervous systems.
The key to move fast is to speed up gradually
As a flamenco dancer (and a leader), I have the power to change the status quo and speed things up. In a live performance, I can use my strong footwork to accelerate the tempo. This adds tension, excitement and signals that something important is about to happen. The technical term for this is subida, and to do it well I need to:
Relax: ironically, in this high stakes moment is when I need to relax the most. Otherwise my muscles tense up and lock. So I let go and trust my body will know what to do.
Speed up gradually: when you do that, the musicians can naturally follow and it also creates a beautiful crescendo sound, like a choo-choo train leaving the station.
Listen to a short subida:
A subida requires coordination in real time, without exchanging a word. But artists are so attuned to each other that we can intuitively anticipate where things are going.
When I was a less experienced dancer, I would jump too suddenly to the faster beat. The musicians would get confused and the result was cacophony. Interestingly, that was my behavior as a leader at work, too: I would throw change over the fence and expect people to sink or swim. Or I would ask people for input, but then turn around and just do what I thought was best. It’s funny how our embodiment shows up across different aspects of our lives.
Sometimes, there is resistance. I’ve worked with musicians who could not achieve the speed I aspired to, no matter how much I stomped. I would come out of the performance tired, frustrated and with inflamed knees. Over the years, I learned to respect people’s capacity. With time and with practice, everyone gets faster. If I can have my way, of course I prefer to perform with musicians I know can keep up. But most of the time, you don’t know the team you’re getting. Which is ok, because you don’t need speed to create a beautiful flamenco performance. Most of the time I work with musicians who are much better than I am technically. But they always make me feel and look like a great dancer, even though they could be working with someone more advanced. This is the power of synchrony at its best. We are all in it together, for the love of the art. Art is more important than acrobatics.
A case study of synchrony: re-engaging employees after a merger
A few years ago, I worked at a biotech company that was acquired by a pharmaceutical giant. In the first years of integration, leadership and employee turnover increased significantly, and employee engagement tumbled. As teams reshuffled and relocated, there was a sense that the golden days of fast growth and small company feel were behind us.
Together with two other colleagues, we wanted to do our part to “make Italians” and shape the new culture and identity. We emailed a couple thousand colleagues inviting them to form small peer groups with people they had never worked with before, and meet monthly for six months to support each other through the change.
A couple hundred people signed up, and we decided to run a pilot with forty-five to test the concept. The next year, we kept it the same size to work out the kinks, despite getting even more interest.
The program was 100% volunteer-run and facilitated. We tapped the most engaged and passionate participants to become facilitators. As a founder, I was authoritarian on values and liberal on execution. Meaning, I was very exact on the vision and the kind of experience we wanted to create, but then each facilitator was free to run their group as they wished. We offered resources they were free to take or leave, and hosted frequent huddles to support them in navigating their groups.
The program soon became very popular, and gained a life of its own. It won a leadership award, and organically spread to corporate functions, other regions and I heard other companies, too. Ten years later, it’s still going strong and thousands of people have participated. Here are some testimonials of the impact it’s had:
My group gives me a channel to discuss topics that are not normally discussed at work, where we usually try to get to a solution as quickly as possible.
Being in my group makes it hard to leave the company.
I got help to start a difficult conversation with my manager. It's not resolved yet, but I'm making progress where I was stuck before.
It made me think that everyone I work with daily must also be struggling with something. I realize I can help them too, like taking time to check in and see how they are really doing.
As much as I wanted to bail out on my group meeting due to work pressures, I always came away with a refreshed feeling. It helped me feel that I was not alone in some of these situations.
How to start leading with synchrony
Organizational change can be painful and disorienting, especially when there are layoffs, restructuring, new technology and expectations. When you prioritize synchrony over urgency you’re working with human nature, instead of against it. You can make change a more positive and sustainable experience.
Here are a few suggestions to help you get started:
1. Synchronize with yourself first: in the modern world, disconnected as we are from nature, following the pace of artificial devices and back-to-back meetings, it’s hard to know anymore what our natural rhythm is. Fast feels like the way everything should be. Take care of your energy and your heart (rate). If you can, take a real long break from any obligations (eg a sabbatical), and rediscover your pace. The more conscious and healthier your inner beat, the steadier the rhythm that you will radiate.
2. Work on values and trust first: Values and connection are the glue that hold people together- not weekly staff meetings, quarterly town halls, or annual planning cycles. You can’t expect people to move together through change if values and connection are weak. Work on those before you initiate any big change. Bring them to life in every meeting and hallway interaction. No moment is too small. Get in the habit of having real conversations in person to synchronize heart rates and co-regulate nervous systems. You will generate a strong field of compassion, resilience, and community. And people will automatically come back to that stable beat when change gets hard - because it will.
3. Speed up gradually: once you have clear vision and guardrails, get change going in one part of the organization, make it stick there, work out the kinks, then allow it to spread out. Invite people to raise their hands to participate, instead of dictating where change should go next. When things get stuck, simplify, get back into a shared rhythm, then speed up gradually again. The more adept we are at accelerating gradually, the faster and easier change will flow. Rhythm itself will carry you and the organization forward.
How will you experiment with synchrony in your life or organization? Hit reply and let me know!
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Great insights. I'd never thought of it a synchronization issue. The time I experienced a synchronized team it was wonderful, we had a great time and accomplished things. It is great to see how the flamenco concept connect to the organizations and their performance.
Excellent post! I've a new word to describe an entire phenomenon: subida. I'm also reminded how much synchronization is part of Nature. Examples: https://youtu.be/t-_VPRCtiUg?si=hSCdl5e7OL75CnXF