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Why You Should Beware The Action Trap
My friend Jessica Kriegel often warns leaders about the action trap, the mistaken belief that if we just do something we’ll get results. We’re conditioned to have a bias for action, to do something rather than nothing. Yet actions without a sound strategy are doomed to fail. We need to avoid the trap of doing stuff just to make ourselves feel better. Action is no substitute for discipline.
The truth is that good ideas fail all of the time for all kinds of reasons. The status quo always has inertia on its side and never yields its power gracefully. There are also cultural norms and rituals that are rarely obvious. And beneath the surface, there are always unseen obstacles that can derail even the best-intended efforts.
Until you identify, analyze and understand exactly what your actions are targeted at, you’re just wasting time and resources. Even worse, as you lurch from one failed action to another, you create stress, erode trust and fuel change fatigue, making future actions even less likely to succeed. Smart leaders learn to avoid this cycle. Here’s how they do that effectively.
Transformation Theater
In March of 2024, just eight months after he joined the company, Bayer CEO Bill Anderson, published a piece in Fortune about his effort to turn around the 160-year old firm. “Bureaucracy…
