If You Wait, You Lose the Choice
In my latest monthly column for the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, I reflect on why people and organizations often delay change until it is forced upon them, and why those who act early keep the most important advantage of all: the choice.
Last night I attended a virtual course with participants from all over the world. The trainer, Timothy Clark, a social scientist from Oxford and author of Epic Change, opened with a simple sentence: “Either you choose change, or change chooses you.”
I was sitting at my desk in Cologne when that sentence struck me. Not because it was new. But because it describes with great precision something I have been observing for years.
I see it in clients whose boards have been talking about transformation for three years without actually changing anything. In competitors who still operate with a business model from 2015, as if the world had not moved since then. In entire industries that watch others pass them by and then act surprised when it is too late.
During the course, Clark asked a simple question: What are the advantages of choosing change yourself?
The answers were obvious. Those who decide for themselves define the direction. The pace. The level of control. Those who wait for change to arrive lose all of that. They are driven instead of driving. They react instead of shaping events.
I see this dynamic everywhere. In companies that are laying off employees today because they failed to invest for years. In people who lose their jobs because they stopped developing their skills. In a society that prefers to administer rather than shape the future and then wonders why other countries move faster.
Why is it easier for some people to embrace change than for others?
I believe it has to do with experience. My parents fled Iran with us when I was four years old. New country, new language, new rules, all at once. For me, change was never a concept from a management book. It was daily life. When you learn early that nothing stays the same, adaptation stops feeling like stress and becomes a competence.
Of course, no one needs to lose their home country to develop that competence. But the willingness to embrace change does not fall from the sky. It grows through practice. Every small decision to do something differently lowers the barrier for the next step. Those who postpone every change eventually find even the smallest step difficult.
The real problem is rarely that people cannot change. The problem is that they wait too long. They wait for the perfect moment, for clear instructions, for certainty. But certainty does not exist. There is only the difference between those who act and those who react. Between those who shape events and those who allow others to shape them.
Clark summarized it with another idea during the course: leadership means challenging the status quo and shaping the path toward the next equilibrium. According to Clark, change management is a core capability. And it does not apply only to people with leadership titles. It applies to everyone. To the employee who knows their skills are no longer sufficient but does not learn anything new. To the department that knows its process is outdated but continues as before.
Ask yourself tonight: In which area of my life am I currently waiting? Where am I holding on to the status quo even though I know it will not last? And what would be the smallest step I could take tomorrow?
You do not have to change everything at once. But you do have to start deciding.
Because those who wait lose the choice.
Change will come either way. The only question is whether you define the conditions and shape it, or whether others do that for you.
From Nothing comes Nothing
