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RESEARCH, ANALYSIS & TRENDS

On the flip side, leadership is also the ability to take says Daniel Flynn, its co-founder. “We felt the link was
people on the journey with you, even if it wasn’t the very important for customers: buying water and funding
place they thought they should go. This requires tough water, and buying food and funding food, and so on.”
decisions, including confronting those who need to be Ahead of a big meeting with Australian chainstore 7-
confronted. Doing so will quickly differentiate your Eleven, Thankyou went public and asked fans to jump
‘supporters’ from those who are committed to a strategy onto 7-Eleven’s wall and tell them that if they stocked
and getting it done. ‘Supporters’ stand on the sidelines Thankyou water, they’d buy it. The gamble worked and
cheering whilst the committed ones do all of the work. Thankyou water was on 7-Eleven shelves within
Support is quicksand to organizational reform and far weeks.
more insidious than dissent.
But to win over the bigger retail giants with similar food
Know the conflict you’re working with and body care products would take far more daring. In
their six-minute video on YouTube, they told fans that
Opposition is not a bad thing. Ticking people off is to be they wanted to present to Coles and Woolies. It was
expected, if you want to leave a compelling footprint. viewed 80,000 in two weeks. They also convinced do-
But when dissension knocks on your door, you need to nors to fund two helicopters to fly around Coles and
know what kind of conflict you’re working with, and how Woolworths’ head offices carrying a ten thousand
best to tip the tension towards your greater advantage. square foot sign which read: “Dear Coles / Woolworths,
Thankyou for changing the world! (if you say yes)”. The
Within any organization, bruised egos and brittle-boned rest, as they say, is history with the startup having
loyalties to “the way it’s always been done” are danger- raised $2.5 million to give 150,000 people access to
ous contenders. They’re loud; they’re disruptive, and water, and 190,000 access to hygiene and sanitation,
you have to handle them with care. Often times, the as well as 12.1 million days’ worth of food aid in 16
best way to handle them is to graciously ignore the countries in six and a half years.
bark, since the bite is bearable, and just keep going.
Good leaders understand that ideas wait for no one,
But on the other hand, some conflict is your company’s and when they come, it’s our job to pull them down into
secret sauce – and you’d be rewarded by paying atten- reality. As designer Charlie Wollberg says, “If you don’t
tion to it. You need to be able to ask the question, is this bring that idea to life, it’ll go out and inspire someone
particular head but a handbrake or an opportunity? If it’s else. Because even if people like to wait, the ideas
the latter, use all of your EQ and resources available to don’t like to.”
transform these differences of opinion into creative ten-
sion that fuels the organization forward. A good leader Get comfortable with being uncomfortable
understands that there actually is an “I” in team. But, at
the same time, the team only works best when diver- In a constant world of disruptive overhaul, we need to
gent skills and personalities are given room to operate sidle up to friction and get comfortable with critique.
collaboratively, in a way that works best for them. Ticking people off is not something to aim for, but it’s
often a vital part of moving forward – and will help re-
Turn your resistance into opportunity veal who you’re moving forward with. The point is to
accept that it’s going to be a part of
In his HBR article, writer and Innovations Editor Philip where you’re headed. After all, if
Auerswald writes about how even the underdog can you’re not ticking anyone off – perhaps
push back the onslaught of incumbent resistance and you should be! ◊
come out on top, by making the competition the enemy
and your cause the venerable hero. As Auerswald put it, By Adam Gifford,
“The more disruptive your innovation, the more your
success needs to look like the creation of a political Technical Officer, Aurecon
movement.”
Thankyou is a social enterprise that understands this This post originally appeared on Aurecon’s J
concept pretty well. “We wanted to tackle a huge global ust Imagine blog.
problem (lack of clean water) with a huge global prod-
uct, and the product to get us there was bottled water,”

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