So the art is to find the right balance between setting a direction and keeping practical.

His advice to leaders coming into new positions from the inside: “I would take the opportunity to make yourself an outsider. Having an outside facilitator can help with this - he or she can bring in a third-party perspective and independent facts or research that might be different from what you have at the top of your mind or readily at hand.

As you involve more and more people in the change process, you may feel as if you’re treading water. This feeling comes from having to introduce and convince each new wave of people as your changes percolate down through the organization. During your first year there will never be a time when your strategic agenda isn’t being criticized, questioned, and debated. Be patient, and remember that the new converts will need the same time that you and others did to get it.

When you go through that degree of structural change,” Lacy adds, “in hindsight it turned out to be more of an opportunity for cultural change than I thought. We disoriented people so much that we couldn’t go back; things were so different that people lost most of their reference points, so they couldn’t regress to the old ways because there was nothing remaining to regress to. In fact, we could accelerate the pace of change and make the change stick better.

When you’re in a crisis, you also have to show confidence. You have to be visible and absorb the uncertainty that people feel. Think of your job as being sort of a shock absorber between the events swirling around the company and your employees’ deep-seated desire for stability and security. This will help when people are constantly examining your every gesture and expression for hidden messages that imply that things might be worse than they already are.