“Nayar says all revolutions, social and in business, come out of dissatisfaction. “Gandhi, for instance, spent a humongous amount of time convincing people why they should be unhappy with the British Raj. So, the first step towards any change is to understand that the status quo is not good enough, creating positive dissatisfaction as I call it.” Creating dissatisfaction is not enough, you have to show a vision for tomorrow, too, and connect the dots of strategy, according to Nayar.

Well said, but can an organisation stay in a state of perennial unhappiness? Isn’t there a danger of rocking the boat too hard? “Suppose you’re standing on the ledge of a building on fire and you know the only way out is to jump, but you also have a 100 colleagues standing along with you. How do you convince them to jump? And you have only 30 seconds to do it. You cannot say the solution for us is to jump because you have not created the threat with the status quo. You have to say I assure you if we keep standing here we’ll die. So, in companies when leaders want change, they have to first reflect and then direct the conversation to what would happen if they maintain the status quo.”

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