release

the paradox of transformation—why we cling to what no longer serves us

Three conversations this week, with three different leaders, all circling around the same fundamental question: Why is it so hard to let go of things that are clearly broken? A city manager struggling to release a program that had outlived its effectiveness. A nonprofit leader holding onto a partnership that had become more burden than benefit. A business owner unable to abandon a strategy that had worked five years ago but was failing now.

Each conversation revealed the same paradox: we often invest more energy trying to fix what's broken than we would spend creating something new. We cling to the familiar dysfunction rather than face the uncertainty of transformation. Yet some of life's most profound breakthroughs come not from repairing what was, but from having the courage to release it entirely.

The Psychology of Holding On

There's something deeply human about our reluctance to let go. We hold onto broken systems with the same tenacity that we hold onto relationships that have run their course or strategies that once served us well. Part of this is practical. We've invested time, energy, resources, and reputation into these things. Economists call this the sunk cost fallacy: we continue investing in something simply because we've already invested so much, even when the rational choice would be to walk away.

But the psychology runs deeper than economic logic. Often, we hold on because letting go feels like admitting failure. If we release this program, this partnership, this approach, what does that say about our judgment in creating or choosing it in the first place? Our identity becomes entangled with our decisions, making it difficult to separate the value of who we are from the effectiveness of what we've built.

There's also the seductive comfort of the known. Even when something isn't working well, at least we understand how it doesn't work. We know the patterns of its dysfunction, can predict its limitations, can manage its problems. The unknown alternative might be better, but it might also be worse. And in the space between certainty and possibility, we often choose the certainty of manageable dissatisfaction over the risk of potential disappointment.

The Irreversible Nature of True Transformation

But here's what I've learned about transformation: some changes are not improvements, they're metamorphoses. The butterfly will never be the caterpillar again. There are moments in our personal and organizational evolution when going back is not just inadvisable; it's impossible. The leader who has developed authentic emotional intelligence cannot return to ruling through intimidation. The organization that has tasted genuine innovation cannot go back to purely bureaucratic decision-making. The community that has experienced collaborative governance cannot return to top-down control.

These transformations are qualitatively different from incremental improvements. They represent emergent properties, characteristics that arise from the interaction of simpler components but cannot be reduced back to those components. When a team develops genuine psychological safety, something new emerges that is more than the sum of improved individual behaviors. When an organization develops adaptive capacity, it becomes something fundamentally different from a more efficient version of what it was before.

Recognizing these moments of true transformation requires a different kind of courage than managing incremental change. It requires the willingness to release not just specific practices or structures, but entire ways of being that may have defined us for years or decades. It asks us to trust that what emerges from the release will be more aligned with our deepest purposes than what we're holding onto.

The Art of Selective Renewal

Yet not everything needs to be released in order for transformation to occur. One of the most crucial leadership skills is developing the discernment to know what needs complete release versus what can serve as foundation for renewal. Change doesn't need to be feared because it allows us to build from a place of learning what doesn't work—but it also allows us to build upon what does.

When organizations undergo transformation, the instinct is often to change everything or to change nothing. Both approaches miss the nuanced reality that some elements of what exists may be perfectly suited for what's emerging, while others have become genuine obstacles to growth. The art lies in the discernment, knowing which foundations to preserve and which structures to release.

I've seen leaders destroy functioning systems in their enthusiasm for change, creating chaos where thoughtful evolution would have sufficed. I've also seen leaders cling to outdated approaches so tightly that they prevented any meaningful adaptation at all. The wisdom lies in the middle path: releasing what no longer serves while honoring what continues to support our highest purposes.

This requires conscious archaeology, carefully excavating the layers of what we've built to understand which elements remain structurally sound and which have become impediments to progress. It means asking not just what isn't working, but what is working that we want to carry forward and what has served its purpose and can now be released with gratitude rather than judgment.

The Practice of Conscious Release

Learning to release consciously is perhaps one of leadership's most undervalued skills. It requires us to hold our attachments lightly, to see our investments as experiments rather than monuments, to treat our decisions as data points in an ongoing process of discovery rather than permanent statements about our competence.

This doesn't mean becoming cavalier about commitments or abandoning persistence when challenges arise. Rather, it means developing the capacity to distinguish between challenges that are calling us to grow and situations that are calling us to release. Sometimes the most courageous act is continuing when everything suggests we should quit. Sometimes it's quitting when everything suggests we should continue.

The question becomes: How do we develop this discernment? How do we learn to release what no longer serves us while preserving what continues to support our growth? How do we embrace the irreversible nature of true transformation while building thoughtfully upon the foundations that remain solid?

The answer, I believe, lies in shifting our relationship with impermanence itself. When we truly understand that everything is in constant flux, our organizations, our strategies, our capabilities, our challenges, we can hold our current approaches more lightly. We can invest fully while remaining unattached to outcomes. We can build with commitment while staying open to the possibility that what we're building may need to be released to make room for what wants to emerge.

The butterfly cannot return to being a caterpillar, but it carries forward everything essential from its earlier form, just in a completely new configuration. This is the promise of conscious release: not the destruction of value, but its transformation into something more aligned with what's trying to emerge.

Release, it turns out, is not about losing what we've built. It's about creating space for what we're becoming.

Ready to explore how conscious release can create space for transformation in your organization?

Let's discuss how to develop the discernment between what needs to be released and what can serve as the foundation for renewal.