I’ve been thinking deeper about how to truly do something ever since I posted last week about Colonel John Boyd’s be someone or do something test,
To be somebody or to do something. In life there is often a roll call. That’s when you have to make a decision. To be or to do?” – Colonel John Boyd, U.S. Air Force
That thinking has led me to look underneath driving change, and examine why it is so much more effective than all the other change-inducement methods I’ve found.
I think the answer lies in the power behind the first act. I’d always thought the first act in driving change was to “choose the change for yourself,” just as the definition says. Tonight, I realized that there is actually a step before that one.
The first act in driving change is the conscious choice to not impose our will upon someone else, nor matter how much we think the change will be good for them. It’s a choice which rises from our strong conviction that everyone has the right to shape their life through their own choices.
I refuse to make you change. I hope to win you to the change instead; to win you freely, deliberately, and joyfully.
How much more powerful driving change now seems!
How different than so many other ways!
How truly a first act of leadership it is!
I choose to do something. I choose to allow you to freely choose too. I hope you’ll join me in driving change.
Why not try?
Colonel Boyd studied a great deal about guerrilla warfare, trying to decipher what had happened in the Vietnam War. One of the ideas that came out of that was his notion, that in conflict one of our principle goals is to win over the “neutrals”–those who have yet to take sides in the struggle going around them.
This is exactly the distinction that you point to in the difference between driving change, and driving people. Driving people drives the neutrals away. Driving change intrigues them and pulls them toward you.