Engine For Change

Do you know what your strengths are? Have you taken Gallup’s Strengths Finder 2.0?  It’s less than $15 at Amazon; that’s too cheap to pass up.  Go order it now (and that’s not an order, but a strong suggestion).

If you take the assessment and you’re looking for someone to talk you through what it really means for you, just let me know at engineforchange@gmail.com.  I love helping people come up with strategies for how to take advantage of their strengths.

If you’ve followed this blog for a while you’ll know I’m a fan of Gallup’s Strengths Finder 2.0 assessment.  See previous posts here, here and here.

One of my top five strengths is Strategic and I’ve had the privilege of playing to it a lot lately.  I feel energized after I hold a strategy session with someone who is trying to solve a problem and is looking for some ideas for how to solve it.  I throw out a lot of suggestions and allow the person to choose for themselves which solutions work best.

Over the years of focusing on my strengths I’ve learned that any day that has one of these strategy opportunities is going to be a great day.  Today was no exception.

Thank you to my friends and coworkers who let me play to my strengths and assist them through their task challenges.  I wouldn’t be as energized without you.

Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” – Viktor E. Frankl

If you hope to understand what makes driving change work so well, there are some authors that you should know.

You could start with John Kotter.  His Leading Change gives us the 8-step process, the antidote to the failed change behaviors too many companies continue to employ.  My favorite Kotter books are  Sense of Urgency and Buy-In.

You should know who Seth Godin is and you should start to meet him via his book Linchpin.

You’ll want to pay attention to Daniel Pink and the Heath Brothers, Dan and Chip.  Pink’s Drive is fun and this video sums it up nicely.  Dan and Chip’s Made to Stick and Switch are worth devouring and the two books could almost be categorized as beach reading by the business book nerds amongst us.

There are many more authors I could point you to, but I don’t want to bog you down all at once.

If you set a goal for yourself that by the end of the year you would read all the books mentioned above, I can almost guarantee that you would be even more effective at driving change.

You want to be even better, don’t you?

So what are you waiting for?

Get reading!

Bonus question: What author(s) do you think deserve to be on a short list of must reads for anyone driving change?

I’ll admit it. I’m addicted to making progress.

If I’ve got a goal in my head, I have a deep down need to feel as if I’m getting closer to that goal.  I hate–HATE–going backward.

Yet, I know that going backward is sometimes the route I must take to get to my goal.

Every change, driving change or not, is all forward motion.

That doesn’t make it any easier to tolerate the times when we’re going backward, but at least I can comfort myself in the normalcy of my condition.

So, when you’re going backward, keep telling yourself it is temporary, keep driving change, keep claiming wins and someday you’ll be going forward again.

Believe it.

Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero” [Translated as: "Seize the Day, putting as little trust as possible in the future"] – Horace

If you catch yourself thinking, “I do that (whatever that is) the next time I have the chance,” consider that there may never be a next time.

This past weekend I had the opportunity to ride in a restored World War II half track vehicle with an Armed Forces Day parade grand marshal (my husband’s uncle, USMC Major General Richard Mills) in the nation’s largest and longest running Armed Forces Day parade.

That opportunity would not have come about if I didn’t seize the moment last Thursday to connect my friend, who coordinates the parade grand marshal invite, with my husband’s uncle, who had recently returned from Afghanistan.  I could have let the moment pass me by, thinking that there would be another time to make the call.  There may have been, but now I will never have to wonder.

That may have been a big opportunity to grab, but most opportunities that we let pass by are small. The choice between going back in the house to say, “I love you,” to our spouse or child or letting this morning slip by without saying it. The choice between calling a friend or putting it off until another day.  The choice between starting on that change now, or waiting until my boss asks me to make the change.  Too often you hear of people regretting the opportunities they missed.

You don’t have to seize every opportunity, but remember the second portion of the quote above and put as little trust as possible in the future.  Choose to take the opportunity today.

There are some days where it seems I’m playing against my strengths all day.

Those days hurt.

I find comfort in reminding myself that tomorrow doesn’t have to be like today, and then I go to bed.

What do you do to cope with a bad day?  How do you recharge yourself?

In sports you hear a lot about momentum.  Which team has the momentum? Did the other team just steal the momentum?

You don’t hear the word momentum much in organizations.

You hear it in organizations that are driving change.

Why?

Because when you talk about wins and you chart your progress toward your destination, you can give the people of your organization a true physical sensation of sustained forward motion and the word momentum will then leap from their lips.  “This project has a lot of momentum.”  “I can’t believe how much momentum we’ve built so quickly.”

If you’re driving change, are you celebrating the momentum in your projects? Are you point it out to your team members?  Why not?

REMEMBER: Wednesday night is the Linchpin Meetup at Cloverleaf at 5 pm for all EFC followers in Bremerton. I look forward to seeing you there.

Don’t wait for extraordinary opportunities. Seize common occasions and make them great. Weak men wait for opportunities; strong men make them.” – Orison Swett Marden

In 2001 Pixar released the movie Monsters, Inc.  In the movie, a monster world is electrically powered by the energy collected from children’s screams.  Each night after kids around the world go to bed, scare teams are sent through closet doors to collect scream energy.  As the movie goes along we follow a star employee, monster Sulley, as he accidentally brings a toddler, Boo,  into the monster world.  Hijinks ensue.  At the conclusion of the movie, Sulley realizes that  Boo’s laughter is an amazingly more potent power supply than her screams.  The movie closes with the monster scaring floor transformed into a laughter floor, with monster sent into kids’ rooms to tell them jokes and keep them laughing.

Why am I forcing you through a synopsis of a 10 year old kids movie?  Because the lesson of Monsters, Inc. (i.e., joy is more powerful than fear) is the same lesson you learn when you try driving change for the first time over driving people.  You’ll be shocked how much power you can harness with such a simple change, of removing the fear and amplifying the joy in your change.

To illustrate this point, I drew some squiggles that show the rough path someone (or some team) takes when they drive change compared to when they drive people.

Which path would you rather be on?

Try out driving change for yourself.  I bet you’ll like it.

Why not try?

What should you do when you find out someone else is working on a change just like yours?

Create a partnership.

Ask the other group how you and your urgent friends or coworkers can pair with them to achieve your mutual goal.

Offer your team’s strengths and ask to merge your groups together.

If they don’t know how already, show the other group how to drive change.

You’ll be surprised how much faster your combined group will sail through the change once you’ve got more urgent people sailing along with you.

Why not try?

Who can you partner with today?