How Do You Deal Well with Disruptive Change? A Philosopher’s View
Tom Morris holds a double PhD from Yale University and after being a highly popular professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, launched out in service of businesses across industries with the wisdom of the ages. He is the author of over 30 books, including pioneering academic studies, national bestsellers, and the well-known “Philosophy for Dummies.” He is a popular keynote speaker as well as an advisor, guide, and coach to top executives.
In a recent newsletter, Diane Brady, the CEO of Fortune Magazine, wrote of a new CEO survey done by Fortune and Deloitte:
Overall, CEOs reported mounting pessimism about their respective industries’ futures. That said, the majority have some degree of confidence in their company’s ability to navigate external disruptors. And here’s a fun fact: Almost one in five CEOs now regularly uses generative AI tools as part of their job. Change starts at the top.
The “mounting pessimism” is certainly a cause for concern, and so is the reported confidence level for dealing with external factors, which Diane thinks is best described as merely “some degree of confidence,” on the part of “the majority.” This seems clearly to imply that there are CEOs who answered the survey and would characterize themselves as having “no degree of confidence.” Of course, leaders, of all people, are supposed to be good at finding paths forward that support a proper level of confidence and sharing that with everyone else. Part of the job of a leader is to raise everyone’s hopes for the future. To see by contrast this dim characterization of the attitude of top leaders in our time is concerning. But we can turn it around.
In the conversations I’ve been having with leaders, I’ve found that the pessimism referenced by Diane is largely due to a sense of pervasive uncertainty that’s coming from many directions at one—from domestic politics in America, global unpredictability, increased indicators of climate degradation, and the sheer pace of technological change that looms ahead of us. Disruption seems to be the air we all breathe now. But we’re in luck. The great philosophers of the past have given us some powerful advice on how to deal with disruption and uncertainty.
The Art of Adaptation: A Practical Philosophy of Change
We human beings tend to react to disruptive change and most forms of related uncertainty with negative emotions. We worry. We obsess. We mentally rehearse worst-case scenarios. And we often feel a lack of power in the face of forces we don’t fully understand. In an old image, life is handing us lemons we don’t like at all. But there’s an equally old saying: “When life hands you lemons … make lemonade!” The image is powerful and is not just about resilience or grit. We can go from difficulty to delight by how we react. The best philosophers of the past have had some wise ideas on how to do this whenever disruption happens.
The great philosophers have given us an art of change that consists of two component arts to be used together—an art of adaptation and an art of transformation. The art of adaptation is about the change that happens to us. The art of transformation is about the change that will happen only because of us. I want to focus on the first of these today because it’s the art that will help leaders avoid pessimism and embrace greater confidence in the face of disruption.
The art of adaptation contains three component arts:
The art of self-control
The art of positive action
The art of achievement
Each of these has its own guidelines or rules to help you adapt well to any new circumstance.
The Art of Self-control
The skilled behavior of self-control has three rules:
Don’t rush to judgment. Never be too quick to say, “This is terrible” or “This is so great.” Hardly anything is as good as or bad as it first seems, so we should all just calm down.
Value the right things. When you value the wrong things or even perfectly good things to the wrong degree, a broad range of changes can be seen as dangers even if they’re positive. When you value comfort and security more than growth and learning, most big changes appear as threats rather than as new adventures for your development and enrichment. Valuing the right things, helps you to view change more positively.
Use your imagination well. When any disruptive change happens, it’s easy to let your imagination run wild, conjuring up awful possibilities that may not be at all likely. Taking control of your imagination can empower you greatly in the face of change.
The Art of Positive Action
The art of self-control will calm you down in the face of disruption. But then you’ll need to take action in response to the changes you face. And to guide that, there are these three rules:
Govern your attitudes. Don’t let negative attitudes sneak up on you insidiously and unhelpfully. A positive attitude helps facilitate positive results.
Look for opportunities. Times of change present us with new paths forward, but we tend to have a negative bias that presses us to see obstacles rather than opportunities. The most successful people turn this around.
Third, take the initiative. Highly successful people and companies don’t just wait for disruptions to settle down, they get going with experiments of how to make the most of the new contours of their environment.
The Art of Achievement
And finally, within the art of adaptation, there is a third art, the art of achievement. Once you’ve calmed down and oriented yourself to take positive action in response to the disruptive changes you face, you certainly want your efforts to be successful. And that will be facilitated by what I like to call The Seven Cs of Success. We need:
A clear CONCEPTION of what we want, a vivid vision, a goal clearly imagined.
A strong CONFIDENCE that we can attain this new goal.
A focused CONCENTRATION on what it will take to reach the goal.
A stubborn CONSISTENCY in pursuing our vision, a determined persistence.
An emotional COMMITMENT to the importance of what we're doing.
A good CHARACTER to guide us and keep us on a proper course.
A keen CAPACITY TO ENJOY the process along the way.
There is an art or skill associated with each of these conditions, an art of conceiving, of confidence building, of concentration, and so on for all the rest. And the good news is that arts can be cultivated, skills can be improved.
This is a formula for how to escape pessimism and maintain a rational optimism in disruptive, uncertain times. When you respond and react properly, logically, and well, you can begin to take charge of what is within your control and not be distracted by what’s not. Then, acting properly, you can begin to expand that circle.
Artificial Intelligence and Ancient Insights
When you learn to apply these three arts of adaptation well, you can bring this deep human component to your use of the new tools that AI is making available and in that way position yourself and your organization for versions and levels of success in your endeavors that you may never before have imagined.
This is what I like to call AI Squared: Artificial Intelligence x Ancient Insights. With both kinds of AI together, we can create a future of which we’ll all be proud. If you want to dig more deeply into all this, consult my book Plato’s Lemonade Stand: Stirring Change into Something Great.