Engine For Change

When I was growing up we often hosted my mom’s extended family at our house for holidays.  It was a running joke amongst the family to guess how my mom would have rearranged her living room furniture.  You see, we didn’t have much money growing up, so my mom would redecorate by moving around the things we already owned.  At least once a year we had a whole new living room, of sorts.

I share that story because it wasn’t until a few weeks ago that I realized how my mom’s penchant for rearranging furniture conditioned me to be comfortable with change.

In a class, the instructor asked us to test our aptitude for change by moving our office garbage can to the opposite side of our desk.  He told us to pay attention to how many times we tried to throw something away in the old location before our brain rewired to remember to turn the new directions before letting the piece of paper fall from our hand.  I found I was rewired after only one or two false tries.  Others took much longer to look in the new direction.

I can’t say that my mom’s rearrangements is the sole cause of my love of change, but it certainly didn’t hurt.

Therefore, in honor of Mother’s Day, I dedicate this post to my mother who helped me become the engine for change I am today.  Thank you Mom, for everything!

…rethink a lot of what I’ve been doing for a very long time.

That’s a great thing to say after only two days of learning.  Rarely are we offered opportunities to so quickly expand our minds.

Thank you to David Snowden and team for putting on a fantastic Advanced Practitioner Workshop in their Cognitive Edge thinking and methods.

I can now say I better understand the world as it is, not as we may hope it would be.  I’ve been cured of idealism and grounded in a more knowable reality.

I can’t possibly synthesize all my learning into a blog post so quickly, so I’ll merely leave you with the tease of my above statements.  Know there is more to come.

If you can’t wait for me to blog, check out the content at Cognitive Edge.   Post a comment about your favorite find.  Maybe I’ll build my first posts around your favorite themes.  It’s more fun to enjoy the learning together.

Ahead of one’s time: Fig. having ideas or attitudes that are too advanced to be acceptable in the present.: – so says the idioms portion of thefreedictionary.com

I’ve blogged about time a lot here at Engine For Change. In fact, of the 418 posts, 181 contain some reference to time.  That’s 43%.

Yet, I don’t seem to have touched on the true, twitch-inducing, frustration-generating power of first being ahead of your time and then being forgotten in the moment.

When you are driving change, often you’ll try and fail or try and succeed at things that your organization will hardly notice for years.

Then, years (hopefully not decades) later, when the organization catches up, you’ll watch as person after person shows you the shiny new thing they found.

You’ll know its not new at all (you were the organization’s expert at Solution A in 2004), but they are right that it is new to them now in 2012.  Often, the fact that it is new to them is all that matters).

In these moments where the organization catches up to and discovers a place you’ve already been, maybe you’ll want to gloat.  Okay, but don’t gloat for long.

Instead, celebrate their find, encourage them to find the best places/concepts/details within their new find, and then challenge them to drive change with all their new energy.

Yes, you were ahead of your time.  Noted.  Now, your time has come so let’s get to driving some change.

This week I got an e-mail survey at work.  The body of the e-mail read, in part:

Consistent findings from the Office of Personnel Management’s Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) show that Federal employees are dedicated and committed to their work. As a dedicated Federal employee, your feedback about the workplace is essential in addressing areas of challenge and celebrating areas of strength in your agency.
This is your opportunity to drive change [emphasis mine]. The FEVS offers you the chance to express your thoughts and opinions regarding your job, agency, and the workforce as a whole.”

More than a few of you loyal readers who are also government employees forwarded along the e-mail to show me that the words “driving change” are spreading.

Now, if only we could spread the concept behind the words to more people who are yearning for a way to create real, transformational change in the organizations.

Are you willing to tell a friend about Engine for Change?  Please do.

Let’s see how many new friends we can get for the Facebook page or how many new readers we can get coming here to visit.  Let’s do a little driving change of our own and choose to share Engine for Change with one more person this week.

I love driving change so much I don’t just champion it at work and on this blog. I’m also putting it to work in my community.

I am the president of a group formed to bring a beyond accessible playground to my community.

Today, special needs children (especially those with mobility challenges) must travel 40 minutes each way to play at a playground.  The hardship of the trip means these kids get to play on a playground only once or twice a year.

Our goal is to quickly build a playground for people of all abilities right in our community.

Within one year of our founding, we’ve created strong partnerships with our city and key non-profits, and have received $162,000 in community development block grant funds.

When people comment on the project they note the speed with which it has progressed.

They ask what makes this project so successful.  Certainly, the fact that it is all about helping special needs children play is compelling, but I think another big reason is how we’ve approached the change.

Rather than finding a leverage point and whipping our city into providing the park, we stepped forward to lead everyone over the challenges together.

If you’d like to help us bring a beyond accessible playground to my little community, visit: http://hollyridge.org/playgrnd.htm

For only $20 you can help us make the kids’ dreams of accessible play come true, and prove that people driving change together can change a community.

Why not try?  Imagine the smiles you could help create if you choose to drive this change with us.

Usually I like to plan, but sometimes it is nice to just stumble from opportunity to opportunity and see where the conversation/book/situation takes me.

Sometimes we think we can plan our way to success, and part of success is planning, but a lot of success is being ready, willing, and able to act when the right opportunity arrives (or even better be ready, willing, and able to generate the right opportunity at the right time).

When your happen to run into the right person in the elevator or hallway, have the conversation you’ve been trying to plan .

Use the time you have just before a meeting to pop in for a quick conversation with a key teammate.

Allow yourself a chance to turn a negative intrusion into your planned evening (like a quick trip to urgent care with my daughter to diagnose an ear infection) into a positive evening (like a dinner out, just mom and daughter.  Best quote of the night: “I loved our dinner tonight, Mom.”).

When your loyal reader doesn’t send you his invincible picture you planned to use as your Tuesday night blog post: improvise! (Come on, Tom.  I want that picture!)

To summarize: Stumbling is okay.

Plan what you must, but enjoy the stumbling when you can.

Why not try?

Last week I posted some stuff about being a troubleshooter-for-hire.  I’ve since taken the post (and coordinating page) down.  The post introduced too many loose ends that I didn’t care to spend time tying up right now.  I dipped my toe into new water, even if only virtually, and only for a few days and I learned a lot.

When I venture into the water again, I’ll be much more prepared.  Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Make a list of ten decisions you made in the last two weeks, small decisions or large decisions; it doesn’t matter.

Now put a check mark next to each of those decisions you made to avoid or run from some consequence you feared.

Put a star next to each of those decisions you made to seize or run toward an opportunity.

Which group won? The check marks or the stars?

There are plenty of things to fear in this world.

There remain many things worth running from.

Yet, the things to fear are small when compared to the opportunities you could run toward. Right now. Today.

When you’re feeling tired, frustrated, or ready to give up, make a list of your decisions and make the check marks and the stars.

If the check marks (the fears) are still winning, stop and take a deep breath.  Make a list of a few decision you can make right now, today, that you could put a star next to.

Now, make those opportunity capturing decisions.

See what happens.

I bet you’ll like the results.

I’ll admit it.  I’m a sucker for helping someone out, especially someone interested in driving change.

That willingness to get involved in new situations often presents me with the most interesting opportunities and challenges I never would have found on my own.

Some would say that I’m taking on other people’s drama out of some superficial need to appear helpful.

I’d say instead that I’m allowing myself to go on micro-trips into someone’s perspective on a problem and seeing if, when looking from their vantage point, I can see solutions they can’t yet see.

I find the whole process fascinating.  It’s a bit like having someone hunting for a fugitive in the woods call me in as the tracker.  The tracker will see clues in the dirt that the novice would miss.  That’s what I like to think I’m doing.  Plus, each opportunity to use my “tracking skills” hones my skills all the more.

So, this week I say thank you to all my friends and co-workers who provide me seemingly endless strings of opportunities to help out.  I am truly grateful.

Are you looking for opportunities to help out others in their efforts to drive change?  If not, why not?

See my Opportunities Taken post if you’re looking for ways to find these opportunities in your week.

Opportunities are those moments when you are presented with a choice, subtle or not, and you can 1) choose to take the opportunity, 2) choose to not take the opportunity, or 3) not choose and lose the opportunity.

In Andrea Shapiro’s Tipping Point model, contact with advocates (e.g., the number and quality of times when someone who believes in the change interacts with someone who is neutral or doesn’t) influences successful organizational change.  You measure contact with advocates as opportunities taken for contact compared to opportunities available.  When organizations recognize (or create) opportunities to connect people with advocates the change happens faster and is more successful.

Since attending Ms. Shapiro’s course in 2005 I have actively looked for opportunities to create the changes I wanted in my professional and personal life. Seeing and taking those opportunities has made all the difference for me.

I’ve noticed three groups of opportunity takers: 1) those that naturally see and take opportunities, 2) those that have practiced at finding and taking opportunities and 3) those that don’t see opportunities for themselves.

I challenge you to take the opportunity to put yourself into one of the groups and consider taking the action I recommend for each group.

If you take the action and it doesn’t do anything for you, feel free to stop back and comment on the flaws in my advice. Or, you can stop back and tell me the story of how great it worked.  Either way  I love the discussion.

The challenge begins now.  Will you choose to act?

1.  If you naturally see opportunities all around you, consider creating opportunities for others around you.  You’ve got a gift that the world can benefit from.  Try finding one opportunity for someone by the end of next week.  Offer them a chance to do something they may never have considered.  What did they say when you offered them the opportunity?  [Note: This is advice targeted at adults dealing with adults.  Children require a different method of seeing, offering and accepting opportunities.]

2. If you have practiced both finding and taking opportunities, choose to tell your story of what creating and taking opportunities has done for you.  Those who hear your story will benefit from your example.  Try telling one person you story by the end of next week.  What did they say once you told them?

3.  If you struggle to see opportunities, find someone who can see them for you.  Look for a person you find yourself saying “Why do they always get the breaks?” about.  Chances are they don’t; they just take the opportunities when they see them.  By the end of next week, ask that person if they’d be willing to share with you, when they find them, opportunities that you could take to get you closer to one or several of your goals.    Were you surprised by the opportunities they found for you?

You can, if you choose, find and take opportunities and change the outcome of your life.