How to Frame Change as a New Frontier

“Never let your fears set the boundaries of your frontiers.” Martin Hiedegger 

When you lead organizational change, by definition you are embarking on a frontier.  A frontier throughout history, has been a transition zone.  It is where we move from the edge of something known, to the new ‘unknown’. 

Leading organizational change does not encompass the risk of leading a caravan of pioneers through the Oregon trail or manning the first mission to the moon, however, lessons from those frontiers can be applied.  As a leader, understanding that the change journey is a new frontier is an important mindset shift to make for yourself. 

Begin to see new frontiers as anything that falls outside of your comfort zone.  Recognize for yourself and help others see that to move out of your comfort zone you have to embody activities including exploration, learning, and discovery.  Work to communicate change in the language of frontiers, to yourself first and ultimately to those you are leading into the frontier.  

When we embark on a new frontier, we are faced with a myriad of uncertainty.  Frontiers are uncertain by nature, as they exist at the edge of our comfort zone.  To expand your comfort zone, recognize how your comfort zone constricts your beliefs of what is possible. 

This subtle shift in awareness can help us see the need and rationale for exploring frontiers from a mindset of curiosity and growth, instead of avoiding new frontiers out of fear or anxiety.  To help you find more clarity in the midst of a new frontier and the uncertainty that it evokes, take time to reflect and write out a few historic frontiers you have successfully explored. 

These can be personal or professional (think going to college, starting a new job, moving to a new city) and write down the mindset you approached those frontiers with.  Identify the positive feelings you had (excitement, curiosity, joy) and where you identify feelings associated with negativity (anxiety, fear, stress) write down how you overcame those feelings associated with negativity.  Find the successful patterns for yourself in exploring new frontiers, and apply them to the frontiers that are in front of you currently.

Since frontiers are on the edge of our comfort zone, to better navigate through, we need to expand our zone of learning.  When we are faced with moving outside of our comfort zone, we typically enter into a zone of chaos.  This zone of chaos is then followed by a zone of learning.  Work to shift your mindset allowing you to expand your zone of learning and while shrinking your zone of chaos. 

To do this, simply start to see the chaos associated with uncertainty and change as an opportunity to learn.  Changing your mindset to experience the chaos as part of the learning process will help you navigate any new frontier.  This subtle ChangeMindset can help you accelerate the process of moving from an old comfort zone to a new found comfort zone.