Leading Without Chasing

There are moments when a quiet unease appears in the middle of conversations about strategy and development.

Not because we lack direction, but because we almost always speak about movement — and more rarely about what is able to hold it.

For some time now, in my conversations with leaders, I have been trying to understand organisations through a lens that holds both movement and state.

It is as if, beneath our words, there is another rhythm — an assumption we all move within, without quite noticing it.

That movement is the same as progress. That acceleration is a prerequisite for success.

We speak of growth, and of growth in the rate of growth. Of speed and momentum. Of development, transformation and improvement. All of it rests on a way of thinking where one step leads to the next, and where forward direction becomes the goal in itself.

It is a premise that rarely needs to be stated, because it has already become part of how we orient ourselves. When something is moving, it must be right.

When something is moving, it must be right.

In my work, I have come to feel that this conceptual world is too narrow.

Not because movement is unnecessary, but because it is so rarely accompanied by an attention to what already exists within what we are part of. We risk overlooking the value of what does not move.

This can be the parts of a company that carry its culture. The conversations that arise across boundaries, without being planned. The quiet exchange of experience, where new and old knowledge slowly find their way together. An identity that does not constantly shift, but offers a sense of ground.

A subtle shift tends to occur, where what is not yet begins to take the attention away from what already is. The present starts to resemble a passage rather than a place in itself. And it is here, I believe, that we risk losing the kind of grounding that should be able to carry us in a time where much else is in motion.

I have often found myself sitting in rooms where the conversation revolves around change and new directions, and feeling a growing urge to ask what it is the organisation already contains. Not as a polite exercise, but as a way of drawing attention to the fact that new initiatives place a strain on an organisation if we do not take into account the dynamics already at work within it.

It is as if we have become accustomed to thinking of organisations primarily as something that must move forward, and in doing so we gradually lose sight of the fact that they are also places where something has already taken shape.

Or where a kind of internal balance exists, which we may not yet fully understand.

A place is not only defined by where it is going, but by the life unfolding within it. By the experience that has accumulated, and by the knowledge that has slowly settled into practice.

When this dimension recedes, something shifts in how we lead. We begin to approach the organisation as a project to be developed, rather than as a space that must also be able to carry.

Our attention turns to what can be set in motion, and we lose some sensitivity to what needs time to take form.

This is perhaps where the paradox becomes most visible.

Because while organisations are in constant movement, they depend on a state that cannot be accelerated. Something in the shared work that only emerges through repetition, presence, and a certain patience.

I sometimes think of the feeling of returning, as a young person, to one's childhood home after being away. After a journey, or a period where everything has been new. And then that moment of sitting at the kitchen table, where things begin to settle. Not because anything is explained, but because there is enough stillness for it to find its own order.

Perhaps organisations need a similar movement. A rhythm between being out in the world and returning home.

Between progression and state.

I have begun to think of organisations as something that also functions as a container. Not in opposition to action, but as a condition for it.

An organisation does not only hold tasks and goals, but also experience, relationships, and a shared attention that cannot easily be recreated once it has been worn down.

This is why I sometimes ask a different kind of question:

What state do we need to be in, in order to receive the world as it is?

What state do we need to be in, in order to receive the world as it is?

It is another way of looking at leadership. Less dramatic, perhaps, but more demanding.

It requires that we shift our attention and spend time observing without immediately acting. My experience is that, over time, this reveals dynamics that show the organisation is more capable of regulating itself than we might have assumed. That we may even achieve more by doing less.

Direction does not lose its importance. But it takes on a different quality when it is not only defined in advance, but also emerges from what is already underway.

There are moments when an organisation almost points in a direction by itself, and where the task of leadership is to recognise it.

I have noticed that some older, owner-led companies carry a particular kind of calm. A sense of grounding that allows them to know who they are, even as they change.

Not as something fixed, but as a connection between what they do and what they are.

The same quality can emerge in younger organisations, if there is enough space for it to take shape.

This kind of coherence creates a different form of strength. Not the one that shows itself in speed, but the one that shows itself in endurance.

An ability to continue without losing oneself along the way.

It is in the tension between movement and state that something essential in leadership unfolds.

If movement loses its connection to what it arises from, it becomes hollow. And if state detaches itself from movement, it begins to harden.

Leadership may not be about choosing between the two, but about staying in their relationship long enough to come to understand it.

It is a slower way of thinking about progress.