“To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction.”
—Sir Isaac Newton

Times change; everyone knows this. Change is that great constant that coincides with the passage of time. I used to work in a call center for the wireless phone industry: Starting as a vanilla agent in the receivables management department, I became one of the fastest employees to move into the “resolutions” department where the duty du jour was to assist agents in doing their jobs and assist customers in escalated situations. Just as any high technology industry, the wireless industry changes quickly. If something didn’t change (at least) on a weekly basis, something was wrong…and the next change would often be much bigger than the changes that would have normally occurred over the course of the last week or more that had not had change.

The easily-learned, but difficult to adapt to principle is that things change. Each day, all around us, we see things changing. However…what is the propensity for people to change along with the changing times?

There are conventional wisdoms abound here. Conventional wisdoms, as anyone whom as read here any time in the recent or distant past, understands that this sort of wisdom is often nothing more than convenient. The short answer is that people can change, but it can be difficult for them to do so.

The longer answer: Sir Isaac Newton, the guy that once proverbially had an apple fall onto his head, then determined that for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction and developed a brand new system of math to describe the phenomena that he had discovered in the universe. Among his definition of the brave new universe that was coming to know the world was the concept of inertia. This principle of classical mechanics dictates that an object at rest will stay at rest and, likewise, an object in motion will tend to stay in motion. People don’t change because they are often held back by inertia such that they have behaviors which hold them back. While I can’t cite the research, I recall hearing once that after a couple weeks of “staying home, holed up in the house,” doing little to nothing productive, a person’s brain chemistry changes fundamentally, such that they are more apt to continue in that mode of living: I’ve witnessed this around me over the years and experienced it myself once, during a down period. I have often asked myself about the madness in the minds of these people.

It seriously requires a person to force themselves to get off of their behind and go out and do something.

An interesting corollary to this: How does one deal with the constant of change?

Most of the time people are resistant to change. Going back to my days in the call center business I learned one critical thing: The people that resist change often get left behind. The people whom grasp onto the change, ride the wave, and become a part of the change, “change agents” and “change warriors,” often find themselves benefiting from the change rather than becoming a casualty of it. However, I have a caveat coupled with a case study: Be careful not to become a casualty of the change

The Force Multiplier Effect

We look around our worlds, as we each meander through our daily lives, and we see any number of people just trying to “get by.” They wake up in the mornings and perform a routine series of activities until such time that they can go home; washing, rinsing, and repeating the next day. So many things in our lives, and their effectiveness, are measured by a stick of limited means: An easily quantifiable action producing an easily quantifiable result in the manner that an equal force begets an equal reaction.

There are things in this life, however, that aren’t so discrete. Some things add to the equal force-equal result equation allows the result to become worth more than the sum of the parts put into it.

There are many things in nature that exhibit the same sort of phenomenon: Take the particles that you find inside the nucleus of an atom: Protons and neutrons. In and of themselves, they have limited value. When they are held together with their opposing charges, they can lump themselves into a (known number) of 118 different combinations. These combinations are the elements which we find in the universe—from the common sorts of hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen to the less-common such as gold and uranium. In various combinations they make life possible and each of those things that we take for granted on a daily basis. By themselves, the universe’s smallest particles mean little to nothing in the greater scheme of things, for instance; but the sum of their parts is greater than science can fathom yet.

I first realized this when I was working at Windy’s Pizza (we were also a bar). In fact, this was my first “real job” working for someone else: Where I learned that, while sometimes work is just a monotonous process that you go through. Other times, however, there are things that increase your morale so much that the process which you’re going through becomes something that you’re more effective, efficient, and, ultimately, better at. At Windy’s, this was music. Clint Revelette and I would play music while we were cleaning up on a Friday evening after busy dinner rushes.

I would go through other jobs and see many, many other examples of this morale-building principle. I quickly learned that music in itself wasn’t a fundamental force multiplying principle; instead, it was morale that I determined to be a fundamental force multiplier.

Expect this to be merely the tip of the iceberg for this topic, for it’s a very important addition to the toolbox of a leader.

Emotions as a Force Multiplier

“Live life like the owner of a heart of stone
No one touches, touch no one
But the road gets weary when you’re all alone
I’ve spent too many nights looking over my shoulder
And the ways of the world make a heart grow colder”

—Richard Marx, “Wait for the Sunrise”

A good friend once enlightened me with the bit of wisdom that “people do things, ultimately, to find entertainment value.” You go to work so that you can afford to be entertained. You spend money on the best tickets for such-and-such an event to be entertained. Entertainment begets positive emotions, and people ultimately do things to lead to delight, happiness, satisfaction. Call it the pursuit of happiness, if you will. With all this talk of emotion, where does it fit into things? Yes, people condition their actions to sway away from negative feelings and to sway towards big things. Look in the news and you’ll find stories that are likely manifestations of people with hurt feelings.

The military thickened my skin, hardened my heart. I don’t feel that people are born with the capability to withstand a lot of negative emotion: Instead, it is a conditioned response to their environment. In a more technical description, emotional coldness is not necessarily a genetic function, but more a manifestation of environmental factors. By the time that I was out I was ready to put my game face on in a matter of micro-seconds: A stern-looking Patton, of sorts. I developed a single, multi-purpose emotion. I was the epitome of a warrior: I could withstand great bouts of the cold, cold world and deal with a given mission however it was called to be dealt with: I could present a warm and kind persona or a firm, mission-oriented one.

Before the military, I wasn’t this person. Often withdrawing into my introversion at the sign of the feeling of failure, I spent this time in deep reflection and constant learning. I came equipped with a warm heart and a mid-western attitude of giving everyone the benefit of the doubt. Years after being out of the military the warmth came back to my heart. The process to master is the balancing act of detachment from emotion while not losing your humanity. I still get hurt from things that I need to be detached from. I take things too personally sometimes; on the other hand, I still have the warrior in me that serves more a functional purpose.

The form of emotion or the function of fight: Herein lies the art to developing yourself. Image is everything, and people expect a leader to be simultaneously compassionate and strong. Indeed, it’s not easy.

Emotion can be a force multiplier, but it needs to be the right kind: It needs to match the purpose at hand. Self-loathing will not benefit you when the mode you need to be in is confidence. A healthy dose of ego might do the trick there, however. Be mindful not to allow the irrationality of emotion to enter the stage, though. Irrationality can be coupled with panic in some cases, and panic is caused by the sudden onset of fear or similar emotions that will otherwise cloud your better judgment.