THE DISTANCE IS NOTHING; IT IS ONLY THE FIRST STEP THAT IS DIFFICULT
“Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The first step is ALWAYS the hardest. However, we know that in time and with practice the unknown becomes known, our comfort zone expands and we begin to create some degree of normalization after the event of the first step.
Think about the “first step” an infant takes. Think about the overall magnitude that motion, forward movement, and the ability to move toward something they want has on the rest of their lives. The first step for an infant is risky, unsteady, and scary…BUT they keep trying until they finally were able to put one foot in front of the other, typically while others cheer on. How proud they are of taking the risk, trying over and over again until they do it. Is it perfect? NO, not by a long shot.
The first step doesn’t need to be perfect… it just needs to be a first step attached to the willingness to keep getting back up to try again.
I briefly discussed “Change Capacity” several weeks ago. Prior to understanding change and how it may “function” in an organization or even in our personal lives, the first step was to EMBRACE the concept change is not stoppable. It is occurring in some way and in some fashion every second of everyday. However, the change we refer to most in organizations is change that either immediately or over time and space has some impact on persons and organizations.
Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defines change as both a verb and a noun. The verb form is defined as “to make different in some particular” or “to replace with another.” The noun form is defined as “the act, process, or result of changing,” a “transformation,” or “substitution.” Often we use the word to signify what is “different.” Webster goes on to say, “Change implies making either an essential difference often amounting to a loss of original identity or a substitution of one thing for another.” It is this “loss of essential identity” that seems to be of most importance in human systems ( Schwandt, 2006).
It is this potential loss that members in organizations must deal with. Often change leads to new roles, different organizational models, and altered power relations that can result in differences in motivation, performance and possibly conflict. “The word ‘change’ produces emotional reactions. It is not a neutral word. To many people it is threatening” (Cartwright, 1951). Just the word “change” in organizations can have immediate effects on people’s lives and organizational effectiveness.
One concept in an organization’s “Change Capacity” is the concept of first identifying the potential loss or change in an organization’s self-concept (An organization is not necessarily the total whole of the business but can be a department, team, smaller organization or group embedded within the whole). The perceived loss and the reaction to it can be called a “weak signal” (Weick, 2008). This means if “weak signals” go unnoticed the reactions may create undesired actions or accumulated undesired actions. If an organization is prepared to identify “weak signals” more aggressively leading to identifying employee’s perceived losses prior to a change effort, it can increase its capacity for greater change success implementation by planning, communicating and by increasing intentional awareness to the subject matter.
A great exercise for any manager to do at the time of planning a change, prior to announcing a change or implementing a change, no matter how small, is to ask, “How MAY this affect individuals, and the whole?” “How does this change impact the organization’s current self-concept and its future self-concept?” It is important to be aware of the perceived current organizational state and the perceived future state (Dooley, 1997) of organizational members. Many times we make changes without asking ourselves these types of questions. Remember, some of the greatest impact from a change is from small incremental or continuous reactions to change that lead to more change having greater impact.
The hazard we face in management is we “devalue” that even a small change can have great impact. With the right preparation, keen awareness as to potential perceptions and actual reactions to the change an organization’s “Change Capacity” can be increased leading to greater organizational success in implementing the desired change.
This is one small intervention to increase Organizational “Change Capacity” it is in the implementation of doing it well that becomes significant. In the near future, I will discuss further the concept or “Organizational State” (Dooley, 1997) mentioned above.
Until the next time…
Practice putting your feet in front of the other and eventually that first step will happen… even if you fall, the “getting up” becomes much easier with Practice.
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