It takes moving your self and others to action to jumpstart and sustain change- and that's a lot more difficult than 'managing' change or 'just' doing it.
As a Psychologist, I have worked with people on a lot of diverse turf- starting with my early days working street corners and Court rooms- I spent a lot of time in detention centers. Don't get the wrong idea- I was not a woman of the night but was a social worker, a young girl trying to save the world, one abused kid, one juvenile offender at a time.
I learned the art of the deal- not on the streets where 'THE Donald" learned the lessons but on street corners where I learned to influence without authority or money. The first win was when I talked a crazed Dad to not slice up my face with a switchblade. This blade-wielding drug-high dad was convinced that I was in his tenement (remember that word?) to take his kid away- and he was right. But I didn't let that get in my way. Instead, I first wondered in the privacy of my mind about what that sharp object was- I knew I had seen one- yes, I concluded quickly- it as in West Side Story- a switchblade-
...then reality hit- this blade, no matter what I called it - or how I sliced it..., was destined for my face. Thinking quickly on my feet, ignorant that I was mastering the art of the deal and the change artistry written about so eloquently by men in those Harvard B-School publications, I looked that crazed-eye man in the eye and spoke to what was most important to him- even in his crazed state. I knew that he wanted his kid.
So I started with a 'vision' - a term I later read about in those 'change management books'- to overshadow his vision of loss, I painted a living color vision of what he would gain if he worked with me- see I was still in the vision- and my face was intact. The picture I painted was one of his working toward keeping his kid - if, indeed, he put the blade down. It was in vivid color- what he was going to do- put the blade down, tell his kid, a single-digit age boy standing there watching with eyes wide and fight-or-flight fear, that he loved him and that he wanted only to find a way to keep him, and that he intended only that and would never hurt him (the boy) or me (the then young well-intended social working girl).
And he bought it- the art of the deal I now see. He saw himself differently, acting, moving, doing things differently, seeing the challenge and even me differently- as the one person who would help him work toward keeping his kid.
I didn't have terms like this that afternoon- vision, helping someone see their role clearly and creating a line of sight between that role and what they would choose to do and their ultimate goal of staying in it for the long run. But that's what I did!
Once that Dad released that blade from his hand and it fell with a thud to the floor, he melted. All of the fightandflight stress chemistry just drained from him. He sobbed, holding tight to his child. I realized then, too, that it is the threat of loss that puts us into fight-or-flight chemistry mode where we fight tooth and nail- or with modern day blades- for that which we fear losing. Sometimes we go to the mat and fight to our deaths. And, in doing so, we do lose the very things that we intended to protect and save and savor.
Creating a vision, articulating your role and drafting an action plan with a line of sight between step one- dropping the blade- and your ultimate destination- keeping your kid. Those are the lessons that I learned from the street about how to jumpstart change- how to gain buy-in- the art of the deal.
The same principles have stood the test of time in my work consulting with people like you and me blindsided by life-altering illness and injury, by corporate warriors trying to turn a strategy into action (no surprise, only 1/3 of people follow their healthcare professional's recommendations and only 1/3 of strategic changes are successfully implemented in corporate America and this flattened global world).
So if you want to save your own life, ditch the 'just' of doing it and start to 'really' do it- it starts with a vision of how you want it to be- or how you want to be. That's step one.
