One of the chief enemies of your organization’s future is the status quo. Keep doing what you’re doing the way you’re doing it and eventually whatever you’re doing will run out of steam. There’s a reason they’re not still making the ’79 Pinto or that Pentium 1 computer you had when you were in school. Everything has a shelf life.
Change is what bridges the gap between what was and what needs to be. The problem is that people resist change. As a result, most of us are content to milk the shelf life of a product or approach for as long as we can. As we saw earlier this week, people usually only change when the pain associated with the status quo is greater than the pain associated with the status quo.
The best way to broker change when people are content with the status quo is this:
Raise the level of discontent with the status quo.
If you make people discontent enough with the way things are, they will begin to long for the way things could be. And you will have ushered in a climate for change.
So how do you do that? How do you raise the level of discontent with the status quo? Here are three ways I’ve found helpful:
- Get passionate. I love the quote attributed to John Wesley: “Catch on fire with enthusiasm and people will come for miles to watch you burn.” It’s true. We want to live passionately – we just need someone to show us the way. As a leader, why don’t you get so bothered by the need to complete your mission that it keeps you up at night? Why don’t you get so discontent with the unmet need around you that you come in to work each day committed to making significant progress toward meeting it? Engage the need around you until it bothers you that it’s not being met. If you can’t get passionate about the cause your organization is designed to address, maybe you’re in the wrong job.
- Focus on the cause. The more you focus your organization on the cause, the more innovative you will become. When everything becomes about efficiency, effectiveness and small tweaks, innovation (and change) dies. If you relentlessly focus on the cause, you will not rest until you have bridged the gap between what is and what needs to be.
- Talk about why, not just what and how. What and how are necessary, but not that inspiring. Sure, you might need a building, a new organizational structure, a new program, or better cash reserves. But who cares – really? Almost nobody. What people care about is why. If you focus on why you need to the next steps (and do so passionately in a way that focuses everyone on the cause), people will rally around the changes you need to make.
There are other ways to break our love affair with the status quo, but those are three approaches that have helped us navigate change.
What’s helped you?
