"What is one thing you're ready now to change? Not the biggest thing, perhaps, but something meaningful."I've been thinking about this question on and off all day; I've found it really hard to answer! Eventually I realised this was because there are many things that I'd like to change, but that I can't directly make them change.
To explain what I mean, we have to think about change. Why would we want to change? I think it's normally to try and improve in some way, which often means overcoming some kind of problem. That means we can invoke Jerry Weinberg's second law of consulting:
"No matter how it looks at first, it's always a people problem."What does all this mean? To me, it means that change always means changing people. That's a problem itself, because you can't make people change, they have to want to change themselves.
So out goes all the change I'd like to affect in my organisation, my client organisations and of course the world in general. Instead I have to focus on the one thing I'm could be ready to change: me.
I was recently talking on the Lonely Coaches Sodality (stick with me here, this isn't an irrelevant digression, honest), again on the subject of change. It struck me there how the ideas about which I was writing sounded so great, and just how often I forgot, didn't apply or simply ignored them.
Hardly news is it? Physician, heal thyself; practice what you preach; lead by example. So if this is such a familiar idea, why can it be so difficult to do? Why would one risk appearing to be a hypocrite?
For me at least, I think it's to do with passion. All the wonderful ideas behind Agile, Lean, TOC, Systems Thinking etc are easy to get excited about. The hard part is applying them; for that you need a cool head, a gentle manner. You need time to think.
So the answer to the question?
I'm ready to change the way I communicate my ideas for the better; to slow myself down quickly, give myself room to hear other people more, talk less and hopefully from this help others change if they want to, too.
