You don’t have all the answers. People will walk different paths, including those you haven’t “paved” for them.
The picture above comically illustrated what is called a “Desire Path”, where people often choose their own path rather than the one laid out for them. I’m reminded of this since moving house a few months ago, as the walk to the railway station has one of these on the route.
Two years ago, I wrote about Desire Paths in the context of choices and facing business leaders around remote work in “What Desire Paths can teach us about returning to the office“.
As we know, in many cities the new normal now is for people to come into the office around three days per week. This was greatly informed by what people coming to work wanted, not simply what leaders thought.
Two years later, much of my time right now is focussed on systems change of large complex systems, organisations and businesses. In that context, my closing paragraph from that earlier post is highly resonant for this work too:
I encourage leaders to have the vision and sense of what the business needs and try to get it right the first time, and at the same time have the humility and open-ness to the fact that you don’t have all the answers, that your people will walk different paths, including those you haven’t “paved” for them, plus humans are irrational, complex, unsolvable.
If you are a leader ready to lead massive change, listen to your people. Do it before you create your strategy for change, then keep doing it and remain open to changing your thinking, your strategy, and your plans.