Lack of Completion Fatigue

OK’s newsletter today had a seemingly pithy observation: people do not have initiative-fatigue in companies, as no-one decries something new; what people have is lack of completion fatigue – that sense of frustration at vacillating intentions and aborted initiatives people see around them.

While I agree with some of the wisdom in the statement, it oversimplifies the problem.  Achievement of a stated intention or consummation of a launched initiative cannot in itself be a virtue.  The very real hurly-burly of changing internal and external landscapes, and the cut and thrust of political power-shifts must necessarily warrant an adaptive and coldly rational evolutionary strategy by the organization, calling for sang-froid about giving up yesterday’s initiative if it does not fit in today’s business AND political atmosphere, especially if the company has a trigger happy culture in launching new initiatives.  Evolution is all about blind-alleys, failed mutations, and the less often cited but intuitive flip-side of the “survival of the fittest” idea: the extinction of the less-fit; what is more, misbegotten ideas must be culled if they do not die natural deaths.  Lack of completion fatigue, as OK calls it, is often nothing more than a perennially cynical, linear, and change-averse attitude in people.  It is easy to sanctimoniously label as irresolution what is in fact a pragmatic approach of real-time course correction in the face of swirling and unpredictable currents.

But I do agree with a kernel of wisdom locked up in the statement I started with.  Change is about credible communication and relentless engagement, so perfectly legitimate shifts of course might easily be mistaken for lack of completion unless clarity and disambiguation dominate the agendas and priorities of change leaders.