Your company is an organism; its cells need to divide to multiply, they need to differentiate to become something new. Don’t worry about what you’re going to lose—think about what you’re going to become.

I went to our board’s compensation committee and explained the dilemma. When you innovate, everything needs to change, not just the way you make or deliver a product. Many of the practices and structures within the company need to adapt, too, including, in this case, how the board rewards our executives. I proposed a radical idea— essentially, that I would determine compensation, based on how much they contributed to this new strategy, even though, without easily measured financial results, this was going to be far more subjective than our typical compensation practices.

If your people don’t know what the direction is, they won’t know where to go. The result: Energy dissipates, momentum slows, morale plummets, and the company drifts. It’s not a pretty picture. Making sure everyone sees the same picture and then understands what that picture means, Parson says, requires “more contact with people, more opportunities to meet them, and more communication.

What’s incredible is how he didn’t do it. He didn’t fire or demote anyone. He didn’t change the hierarchy. He didn’t change any technology. The only real change was within himself. He started to identify his potential blind spots, and to look at the world from the crew’s perspective.

Abrashoff observed one of the ship’s usual Sunday afternoon cookouts shortly after assuming command, and noticed a long line of sailors waiting to get their lunch while officers cut to the head of the line to get their food. Not only that, but after getting their food, the officers went to a private deck to eat apart from the sailors.

I once had a coworker who was also a friend. One day he walked into my office with some news. “I figured out what I’m doing wrong,” he said. "I’m so busy trying to prove to everyone I’m right that I can’t see the world from their point of view.