Why Leaders Need Rebellious Evolution

I never wanted to be the same as everybody else. I wanted to evolve. I didn’t want to rebel but there were times where I felt I had no choice.

That’s not strictly true. I did have a choice. I could have done exactly the same as everybody else. I could have followed their path, followed their journey, done things their way. My choice was to go a different way; to follow my path, to follow my journey.

In the late 90s and early 00s I was quite heavily into canopy formation parachuting. I won a number of national medals with my team and was honored to represent my country at more than one World Championships.

Canopy formations involve leaping from a plane and opening your parachute immediately before building formations by taking grips with your legs and putting them in the lines of your teammates’ canopies.

This, obviously, isn’t for everybody. It is much more of a select discipline within skydiving. Not everybody feels completely comfortable with taking the fabric that is holding them aloft and that they are using to pilot them down to a safe landing and then have somebody try to stick their limbs into it, disrupt the airflow and potentially change how it flies. And, of course, it doesn’t always go to plan. On occasion, it can result in the main canopy malfunctioning and needing to be cutaway prior to deployment of the reserve parachute (all skydivers are mandated to jump with a reserve parachute).

This was a pretty exciting discipline to be involved in but, over the years, I jutted away from it and got heavily involved in canopy piloting. Canopy piloting is a discipline where you effectively fly the canopy equivalent of a Formula One car at speeds in excess of 70 mph in close proximity to the ground. This was a new and exciting discipline.

My Revolution

In 2007, with my canopy piloting teammates, we decided to enter the canopy formation national championships. But, we didn’t want to do it like everybody else. We wanted to shake things up. We wanted to do it our way. We wanted to do it differently. We wanted to evolve. We took new blood and new drive into the competitive environment. We were rebelling.

We took our new, fast Formula One style wings, our heightened skills and ability into that environment and refocused on how to score the points quickly. These wings were not designed for this style of flight at all and perhaps we would have been better off flying a canopy that was designed specifically for this. But we were going to shake things up with our new techniques and if we were going to shake things up we thought we would do it properly!

We were taking our grips on the canopy lines with only our legs and not with our hands like many traditional canopy formation pilots who first take hand grips before then inserting their legs into the line groups. Our newer technique allowed the grips to be taken faster albeit requiring additional skill and precision to do so. We wouldn’t linger and overly display the points to the judges but move on and score extra points within our allocated work in time. This was completely different to how any other team at this competition was flying.

Risk

There was a risk with our style. If our cameraman was not positioned perfectly the judges wouldn’t be able to see the points and, on one of our rounds, we lost a significant number of points due to this. Additionally, we had hardly trained for this discipline but we felt we could count on our array of skills and experience to translate into the relevant skills we would need to bring back a medal.

What we hadn’t accounted on was the reaction of some of the other teams at the competition; teams that had been training for years and that were expecting to medal or win this competition. What we hadn’t accounted for was how upset some of them would be. They felt their ‘deserved’ victory was being stolen from them. They even went so far as to protest our scores — something we felt was a bit of an unsportsmanlike reaction, especially considering the rules specifically state that you cannot protest the scores of another team! Yet, this didn’t stop them.

Embracing the Risk

We had to embrace the risks that were part of our novel solution to this competition. We were being rebellious. We were evolving the dynamics within this competitive discipline. We were trying something new and leading by doing so. This meant things wouldn’t always go our way. We were prepared for that and, where results weren’t what we expected, we had to take it on the chin. We had to own it — good or bad.

Despite our setbacks we ended up with the highest score. Perhaps more importantly, in the aftermath of the event (and when we rebuilt our friendships) we started to see a shift in technique — not the use of our high speed wings (they were never designed for this type of flying) but the grip techniques, discipline and point scoring.

Did this shift happen because of us? Perhaps. Perhaps not. There were others in other countries developing in a similar way. Credit here isn’t important. What’s important is that evolution was undertaken. Traditional techniques, while perfectly good could be, and were, improved upon.

Evolution

Evolution isn’t about being the same as everyone else. Evolution means change. If you want to evolve as a leader, if you want your business, and your team, to evolve then you need change. Sure, you might be doing things right and performing well. If that’s all you want, that’s okay.

But, perhaps you want more. If you want to be like everyone else then act like them — after all, that’s what most people will do. But, I suspect by the fact that you’re still reading, that you probably don’t want to settle for being like everyone else. It’s not always easy. You’ll be a pioneer. You’ll also be a rebel. There’s risk involved. Your new experiment might not work. It might. There will be haters along the journey. You’ll need to battle all of that. And, if it pays off, others will try to take some of the credit.

Is it worth it? It all depends on your appetite for life. If you’re mostly content to tow the party line, have just average-to-high ambitions and tolerate risk then it’s probably not for you. If, on the other hand, you’re a rebellious leader, take ownership of problems, believe the sky is not even close to the limit and find solutions to mitigate your risks then I encourage you to make the leap and lead the evolution.

Evolve. Take the risk. Make a change. Listen to your gut. Just because everyone in your industry, your business, your team does something a certain way doesn’t mean you have to.

Be the evolution.

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See more about Alastair here.

Originally published at switchandshift.com on March 29, 2016.