For the last 15 years, a simple phrase has sat at the top of my website:
“Change is the only constant.”
It captured something I’ve always believed. Life keeps moving forward. Organisations evolve. Markets shift. The people around us grow and change. The only sensible response is to stay flexible and move with it.
For a long time, I thought those words came from the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus.
Today I discovered he never actually said them.
So curiosity got the better of me, and I went looking for what he did say.
What I found really intrigued me.
Heraclitus wrote that you ‘never step into the same river twice’, because new waters are always flowing.
It’s a powerful metaphor for describing our everyday reality. The river may look the same, but the water is always moving.
As a chef I found running a restaurant is like that. And since I’ve learned that great leadership is like that.
On the surface, organisations appear stable. The same meetings, the same teams, the same structures.
But beneath it all, everything is shifting - people, circumstances, pressures, opportunities.
When you stand in a river, the current pushes past you. But your feet are anchored by the riverbed beneath you.
In leadership, that riverbed is your values and the principles you stand on.
Everything around you may change. In fact, it will.
But if your values are clear, they give you the footing you need to stand steady in the flow.
So while the quote I’ve used for years - change is the only constant - might not be historically accurate, the philosophy behind it still feels right in spirit.
Which means, ironically, that I won’t be changing it soon. Because while the river keeps flowing, the riverbed still holds.
