The Paradoxes of Stewardship

THE PARADOXES OF STEWARDSHIP

Knowing one’s purpose story can easily suggest a sense of certainty about what one’s life is all about, and even a sort of closed-ness. Conversely, those who lack this certainty could conclude that they have no such larger purpose and therefore are limited as leaders.

I have come to believe that certainty regarding our purpose, and equally regarding our goals, carries its own dangers, dangers we see frequently displayed in today’s world. In a penetrating analysis, The True Believer, philosopher Eric Hoffer asks what ultimately distinguishes the committed person from the fanatic. His conclusion is “certainty.” The fanatic is certain that he is right. By Hoffer’s definition, whenever we act with certainty that we have the answer we act as fanatics, regardless of the cause. There is a part of us that is closed, that sees a world of black and white. Genuine commitment, on the other hand, always co-exists with some element of questioning and uncertainty. In this sense, commitment is truly a choice, rather than a compulsion.

The second paradox of stewardship, conservation and change, comes from the fact that in one sense, leadership is always about change. Leaders, individually and collectively, work to bring about a different order of things. Their focus is invariably on the new, on what is trying to emerge. I believe one of the reasons a deep sense of purpose is so important for leaders is that it also provides an anchor. While pursuing what is new and emergent, they are also stewards for something they intend to conserve. Yet what they seek to conserve, paradoxically, is a key to enabling change. You can see this, for example, in stories like Darcy Winslow’s. She wanted to “connect to the core” of Nike’s identity as an innovator: in doing so, she freed up energy for change. It also showed up when Dorothy Berry helped the IFC’s managers connect with their aspiration to align successful private enterprises with sustainable development, or when Dave Marsing of Intel discovered that he and his colleagues truly wanted to conserve healthy living.

Chilean biologist Humberto Maturana says evolution is a process of “transformation through conservation.” Nature, according to Maturana, conserves a few basic features, and in so doing frees everything else to change. A simple example is “bilateral symmetry” in the animal world: two eyes, two ears, four legs, and so on. But what is important is the extraordinary evolutionary variety that occurs within the constraints of bilateral symmetry. Change leaders often forget to ask a powerful question: “What do we seek to conserve?” Change naturally induces fear in us all: fear of the unknown, of failure, of not being needed in a new order of things. When we obsessively focus only on what needs to be changed, and not on what we intend to conserve, we reinforce these fears. But when we can clarify what we intend to conserve, some of this fear can be released. When leaders consciously apply this principle, they usually discover that people seek to conserve identity and relationships, such as their identity as innovators, their partnership in reducing poverty, or their support of one another’s mental and physical well-being.