I’ve been thinking a lot this week about how change actually happens. Using force, threat and fear doesn’t work very well; nor do sincere New Year’s resolutions.
At certain times in our lives, we decide we’ve had enough. We’re going to lose that weight, find a relationship that works, earn what we’re worth.
Similarly, an organization wakes up one day and realizes that it has lost the energy that once attracted streams of new customers or that the market has moved on while its products haven’t.
With great determination, we declare that all will be different going forward.
Unfortunately, it rarely is.
Before long, things quietly return to the same dysfunctional–but oh so comfortable–norm. So if change needs to happen, how can we effect it in a way that permanently transforms us? That makes it impossible to revert to the old norm because we no longer are that person or organization?
I think the answer to these questions is that we have to change our story.
All human beings and organizations tell themselves a story over and over about who they are, what they do, why they do it, what is possible for them. The story for human beings develops during childhood and is greatly influenced by the family, community and culture in which we grow up. The story for organizations develops out of the founders’ personalities, intentions, dreams and experiences when starting their company.
In her wonderful book Storycatcher, Christina Baldwin writes:
Story is the mother of us all. First we wrap our lives in language and then we act on who we say we are. We proceed from the word into the world and make a world based on our stories.
This is why it is so important to change our story if we want to change ourselves.
In Tell to Win, Peter Guber shares the story of the comedian and actor George Lopez. Apparently, Lopez grew up in a poor neighborhood without ever knowing his father and with a mother who was mostly absent. Although he dearly loved the grandmother who raised him, her approach to the world was to take rather than to give.
Many people in such circumstances would have continued into adulthood with the same self-concept and values. Lopez, however, came to a different conclusion. Guber writes:
Suddenly he realized that having a center meant having enough gravity to tell the truth about what he witnessed and also having enough self-regard to try to do the right thing. His reputation might be built on what others witnessed of him, but his character was built on his action when he had no witness other than himself.
As a result of this realization, Lopez consciously decided to change the story he told himself about who he was and what he could become. He also used this new story to write new comedy routines. As a result, he went from being a comic who was mediocre at best to one who was known around the world. Today he is not only financially successful, but he is also a major philanthropist.
One of the clearest examples of corporate change, of course, is how Detroit’s big three automakers went from near bankruptcy to thriving success in just 3 short years. To accomplish this feat, they had to change their self-concept from manufacturers of gas guzzling behemoths of acceptable quality to manufacturers of smart, small, efficient cars of outstanding quality.
In other words, they had to change their story.
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