Engine For Change

Starting doesn’t mean controlling. It means initiating.  Managing means controlling, but that’s an entirely different skill.” – Seth Godin in Poke the Box

I’m no longer surprised when people who’ve spent their lives around driving people to change (i.e., forcing change upon others) assume the worst intentions of these new people driving change (i.e., choosing  a change for themselves and clearing the way for others to follow).

These suspicious people are caught in the management assumption Seth Godin outlines in the starting quote of this post.  When all you’ve ever seen is people managing or controlling others, you automatically assume that someone starting or initiating something is only doing it to gain control over people.

See my Life Outside the Fences post about wolves, sheep and sheep dogs for another telling of this growing folk tale.

How can you win over the suspicious people to give you room to start something?  You can’t win them so you just have to start something and let them be suspicious.

I’ve found the fastest way to convince people that starting something isn’t about controlling something is to start something and then dutifully discipline yourself to not take control of others.  If you start something powerful and actively choose not to order anyone to join you, you will win followers faster than any pre-action conversion of skeptics ever could.

Bottom-line: Start, then don’t manage others.  Be a sheep dog, not a wolf.  Drive change.  We need you to act and we need you to act now.

Why not try?

This afternoon I devoured Seth Godin’s new book, Poke the Box.

As an activator, someone accustomed to starting things, I found much to love in this rant, as Godin calls it, devoted to encouraging all of us to start things, lots of things.

As a Guiding Coalition practitioner, I found a lot to enjoy relative to how we have institutionalized the behaviors of starting boldly, improvising as we go along, and being okay with failure of first concepts without losing momentum to keep trying to win.

Here are a few of my favorite snip-its from Poke the Box:

All my Guiding Coalition friends should be able to announce proudly the last line of this clip.

“What do you do here?”

That’s a question I often ask people in organizations.  It’s interesting to hear people describe their roles, their jobs, their sets of tasks.  Some people are self-limiting (“I sort the TPS reports every Thursday”), while others are grandiose (“I’m responsible for our culture”).

Almost no one says, “I start stuff.”

A truth that needs to be more often repeated.

If your project doesn’t have movement, then compared to the rest of the wold, you’re actually moving backward.

This is sadly true.

Those who fear risk also being to fear movement of any kind.”

This is a rallying cry:

…find the energy and the will to challenge the mediocre.”

I love this one:

…the new system depends on unpredictable human beings adding unscheduled insights.

My favorite paragraph title and a strong ending

Organizing for joy …These are the companies that give their people the freedom (and the expectation) that they will create, connect, and surprise. These are the organizations that embrace someone who makes a difference, as opposed to searching the employee handbook for a rule that was violated.

Finally…

Forward motion is a defensible business asset.

Check out Poke the Box.  Since it is only 84, small, quick pages, you too can fly through the book and begin a whole new level of initiating–driving change!

“Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, few in pursuit of the goal”  Friedrich Nietzsche

There are few days where you will receive strong, immediate feedback that what you are doing truly matters.

Though they are few, celebrate them, treasure them, and keep remembering them in your mind.

On your roughest days, remember them again.

Keep driving change.

Here are a few things you could do this week to hone your driving change skills:

• Be fiercely urgent
• Collect your friends
• Create a transformational vision
• Tell your story
• Remove their obstacles
• Claim a win
• Build on the success
• Permanently change the culture