SHORTS | Managing Transformation, Not Change with Paolo Gallo

As passionate as I am about leadership and personal development, there was a big four day leadership conference I went to in Canada every December for four or five years in a row. And one of the big things they spoke about was doing the inner work. And I would nod and agree and I would do some things as a result of that conference, but I never quite got to the stuff that would have been truly transformational, which I probably have got to now. So what does that look like? What are some of the things people could do to really get to know themselves, to improve and do the, what you call the inner work?

Without sounding academic, people need to understand there is a fundamental difference between managing change and managing transformation. These are completely different things. Okay? Managing change implies the need of adaptation. Okay? For example, I lived in Italy, in the United States, in uk, in Switzerland. I live briefly in Kenya, in Brazil, in Thailand. We moved houses. When you something or you change your job, you change your company, you change your role, you change your organizational setting and change management is not easy. And there is a discipline that even at university that helps you to understand change. But fundamentally, change requires mental flexibility and adaptation. Okay? And again, I'm not saying that it's easy, but it's something that is under our skin. We kind of internalize it. When this moment of crisis comes, people confuse this crisis with I need a change. What I mean by this is, let's say you work for JP Morgan, you have this crisis and you resign and you do the same job at Citibank. And after six months you say, gee, that's not exactly where I was before, maybe with an extra bit of money. But fundamentally you have not managed at all a transition. You just manage a change. So the first thing to say, change is not easy. And we spend our life in adapted to change. Okay? When we got married, when we got a child, change is not necessarily a bad thing, actually at times a beautiful thing. When our daughter enter into our life, of course our life was changed, but for the better and forever. So, and I'm so glad that the change occurred. But again, I remain who I was. When you are in the middle of a crisis, the outcome or the response is not a change. It's understanding that you are transforming yourself. And the process of transformation is called transition. Transition transire in Latin means to go to another place. Okay, so what does it mean, transition? Transition means that you have become different, that what motivated you maybe in your 20s or 30s, are no longer motivating you in your 40s or your 50s, something that you find meaningful or Important or relevant is actually no longer there. You also need to let go few things. And I'll give you maybe a practical example. I set up a group with the head of HR of international organizations. And I set up that group, I can tell you in 2003 in London, when I was head of human resources for European bank. And for a good 16 years I was chairing that group because I found it, I created it. Then I left the World Economy Forum and they have a meeting and I wasn't even invited. 10% of me, I was really upset to say, shit, they didn't invite me. I mean, these guys, I mean, I created a damn thing. But then I realized, hold on a second, Paolo, you have decided to do something different in life, okay? And therefore let go. Certain elements that belong to your former self should come as normal. It's like, you know, you want to get married, but you still want to date girls. It doesn't work that way. It really doesn't work. You cannot pick up what you like about your former life and bring it to the new one. So this is to me is incredibly important, which is understanding the difference between managing a change and dealing and managing a transformation of yourself. The first one, you have to adapt. The second one, you have to transform. When you understand the transformation, you also understand what you have to let go. What is not part of your of your personal or professional life anymore. There is a moment of sadness. Because when you let go certain things, there is a moment of sadness. But it's like moving houses. The day where you move, you're probably sad. But as you build a new house in a new place, the energy of building something that is closer to you, overcome by far the sadness of what you left behind.

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