A lot of work as a leader is around keeping the ship afloat-maintaining the good practices you have and balancing that against the need to evolve and change to create the organization’s future. I am a HUGE fan of the Mayo Clinic and as a result, Gianrico Farrugia, M.D.

Mayo is constantly evolving, constantly focused on the customer experience. My family was a frequent flyer there for about two years.

Dr. Farrugia uses one of my favorite metaphors in how he drives change. Pulling on the organization is like pulling on a rubber band. It’s in many ways a mostly emotional struggle and a judgment struggle.

As we evolve as leaders, our core competency ultimately becomes the quality of decisions and judgments. Underestimating the power of inertia not to change causes leaders to not pull or push hard enough. Not knowing when you have loaded too much on your leaders and systems causes the rubber band to break. Both result in no change. In the latter case, you can break the progress you’ve already made.

Dr. Farrugia’s perspective is worth a read.