New Article in The Good Men Project

We tend to celebrate leaders who change things.

New strategies. New ideas. New campaigns. New identities. After all, isn’t that what leaders are supposed to do?

But over the years, I’ve watched companies walk away from enormously valuable ideas, assets, characters, campaigns, and traditions for a reason that doesn’t get talked about enough: The people inside the company got tired of them.

When you live with something every day, you risk assuming that if you’ve seen it a thousand times, your customers must be tired of seeing it too. But customers don’t live inside your company.

There’s a big difference between something that’s worn out and something that’s become familiar. Familiarity can represent years of investment, memory, trust, and emotional connection. Walking away from it simply because we feel pressure to change, to come up with something new, can destroy value rather than create it.

That’s the idea behind my latest article, published this weekend in The Good Men Project:

“The Most Courageous Changes May Be the Ones You Don’t Make.”

I absolutely believe leadership requires the courage to change what no longer works. But it also requires the confidence to recognize when change isn’t the answer.

I’d be interested to hear where you land on this. When is it time for real change, and when is the smarter move to see what you already have through your customers’ eyes and build from there?