A Change Question - Where is this change leading me, and do I want to follow?

Welcome to A Change Question — a special mini-series from The Inner Game of Change.
In each short, solo episode, I bring you one question worth sitting with — the kind that can spark both personal and professional shifts. 

In this episode, I explore a question that often slips past us until it is too late: Where is this change leading me, and do I want to follow?

Change always has direction. Sometimes it carries us forward, other times it drags us somewhere we never meant to go. The risk is drift, arriving at a destination we did not choose.

Drawing on stories from Galileo to Satya Nadella, and from poetry to business pivots, I explore how agency begins with pausing to ask the question, then noticing the patterns shaping the current, and finally choosing the path you want to take.

Because every change carries you somewhere. The real power lies in deciding; drift if you choose, change if you must, but never surrender your agency to choose the path yourself.

Ali Juma
@The Inner Game of Change podcast

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Chapters

• 0:00 Historical Change-Makers Who Chose Their Path

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

Change has a way of sweeping us along before we've even had a chance to think. Some people see where it is heading and choose to act. Galileo looked at the stars and realized that Earth wasn't the center of the universe. The evidence was pulling him in a new direction and, though it cost him his freedom, he refused to drift with the tradition. Florence Nightingale saw soldiers dying from infection, not bullets. Others accepted it as the way things were. She didn't. She changed the path and in doing so, changed medicine. In business. Lowe Gostner at IBM asked the uncomfortable question in the 1990s where is this really heading? Everyone thought IBM's path was hardware. He saw the drift, redirected into services and saved the company. Satya Nadella did something similar at Microsoft when he became CEO in 2014,. The company was clinging to Windows. Nadella asked where technology was moving and chose a new path in cloud and AI. Today that shift defines Microsoft's growth. Contrast that with Kodak sitting on the invention of digital photography but clinging to film. They drifted whilst others acted and the tide washed over them.

Speaker 1: 1:34

Welcome to a change question, a special mini -series from the inner game of change. In each short solo episode, I bring you one question worth sitting with, a kind that can spark both personal and professional growth, because statements close things down but questions open them up. They make us pause, reflect and sometimes see ourselves or our work differently, differently. So here's today's question when is this change leading me and do I want to follow? Not all change is bad, not all change is good, but every change has direction.

Speaker 1: 2:19

The risk is drift. We follow the current busyness, policy, trends or technology and only later discover we've arrived somewhere we never meant to go. Viktor Frankl once wrote between stimulus and response there is a space, and that space is our power to choose our response. That space is where we decide will I drift with this or will I step aside and choose another path? Because the real power isn't in avoiding change. That's impossible. The real power is in agency, the decision to drift on purpose or to change with purpose.

Speaker 1: 2:58

It is a bit like being caught in a river. The current will take you somewhere, whether you paddle or not. You can drift, hoping it ends well. You can fight it. The river keeps moving, but your choice of direction gives you agency.

Speaker 1: 3:22

Poets have always known this tension. Robert Frost wrote two roads diverged in a. With an eye I took the one less traveled by and that has made all the difference. That's what this question is really about. Do we drift down the crowded road because it is there, or do we pause, notice the pattern and choose a different path? But there's a darker side too.

Speaker 1: 3:47

Shakespeare's Hamlet knew what needed to be done, but delayed and delayed, trapped in decision, until it destroyed him. And TS Eliot warned in the Hall of Men this is the way the world ends not with a bang, but a whimper. Drift can end not in drama, but in quiet collapse. That's where I find three simple words helpful Pause, pattern and path. Pause Stop long enough to ask where is this taking me? Pattern Notice the behaviors and assumptions shaping this direction.

Speaker 1: 4:35

Charles Dweck in the Power of Habit reminds us that patterns, not intentions, shape our trajectory. If we don't pause to see the pattern, we will follow it blindly. Maybe your organization is rushing to adopt a new AI tool? Pause Is this about speed, quality or keeping up appearances? Pattern what behaviors are being reinforced? Thoughtful work or frantic work? Path Do I align and learn or do I raise a hand and help steer the direction?

Speaker 1: 5:13

History rewards those who ask the question. Ibm's Pivot, microsoft's Renew, renewal they show what happens when leaders pause, see the pattern and choose a new path. Kodak's decline shows what happens when they don't. And it is not just corporations, it is you, it is me, it is all of us. The current is always moving. The real question is whether we'll drift with it or decide where we want to land. So here's my question for you this week when change is moving around you, will you follow its direction or step back to ask if it is where you really want to go? Because every change carries you somewhere. The power is not in resisting the current, but in deciding. Drift if you choose. Change if you must, but never surrender your agency to choose the path yourself. Until next time, I leave you with this question, thank you.