Talking Story

Starting new conversations in the workplace!

Talking Story: Changes versus Constants

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Tuesday Coaching is up on MWAC today, and we’re looking at both change and our constants using this Nānā i ke kumu framework:

Let’s look at “both source and capacity to learn” in another way, as constants (source) and as change (capacity to learn). At any given time, and with any given effort, we are working on one or the other: Either we are

  • Working to maintain our healthy constants, or
  • Working to effect a change we desire.

Further, it is in effecting a desired change that we experience our most elevated experiences with learning.

People will write me after they have read my book, and ask for exercises for the small business or for the single team in a larger organization, saying, "We don’t have access to the resources the big guys have." You don’t need them! This is precisely the reason I blog here in the first place, to offer you possibilities for discussions ("talk stories" as I call them) that can turn into exercises and mini-studies you can personally apply to your own situation and within your own context.

Changes versus Constants is a beauty.

As I have written at MWAC (and again above) we are working on maintaining a constant or effecting a change within every effort we make – sometimes we work on both simultaneously.

To transfer this lesson plan to your team, just set up a flipchart or whiteboard with two columns:

  1. Write "our Constants" atop one, and "Desired Change" atop the other and get a brainstorm and discussion going.
  2. End it with a specific action plan for one of the efforts you talk about.
  3. End the talking about it (say mahalo!) and get out and do it!
  4. When your team has finished tackling it, bring the flipchart out again in another huddle and just ask everyone: "Do we have anything current to add to this, or shall we just move forward with picking our next issue from this list as it stands?"
  5. Repeat the process.

You can use the full coaching on MWAC to help you as the facilitator (by "full" I just mean today’s Tuesday Essay — don’t get overwhelmed!) or you can print it out and distribute it to your whole team — read it together, then start with number 1 above.

Here is a snippet of the Change section on MWAC today:

Are you okay with Change?

Are there certain proverbs or quotes which became aha! moments for you when you first heard them? This was one of mine:

“People do not resist change; people resist being changed.”

—organizational change pioneer Richard Beckhard

That made so much sense to me!

It made sense both in my own experience with when I vigorously resisted change and when I embraced it.

It made total sense when I thought about those successes and failures I’ve had in trying to champion changes that others resisted accepting no matter how good I thought the change sounded, for aha! it just didn’t sound that great to them.

Said simpler, it wasn’t their idea, and they thought it was a lousy idea.

These are the sub-headings of the MWAC Essay today, How Nānā i ke kumu Helps You Embrace Change and Growth:

  • Are you okay with Change?
  • The worst possible Change? To your Constants.
  • Choosing Embraceable Change.
  • You Choose, or I’ll Choose!
  • Choose to Learn.

If you turn any of them into a Talk Story within your workplace, come back and share your experience with us!

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