Inoculations of Inspiration or Tools for Transformation

Over the past thirty years as a manager and particularly in the last fifteen as a professional consultant and keynote speaker I have built a career around the conviction that it just takes one person, one moment of insight to change a life forever.  There are many people who over my career for whom I have made a profound difference.  There are also many more who have been entertained, educated and even inspired for weeks or months who eventually revert to old habits of thinking, old ways of seeing and old styles of living, working and (not nearly enough) playing.

There is nothing wrong with being inspired by a great motivational speaker. If you are looking for an energizing inoculation of inspiration to carry you through an overtaxed epidemic then one shot may be enough but if you want to change a culture or transform a team the answers must come from within the system itself. Sustainable transformation in complex systems is only possible when the members want to find the solution for themselves.

The days of top down directives and expert initiatives are gone forever. People can be forced to comply but they must be inspired to innovate and the answer to both is contained in the words themselves. Lasting change is never accomplished until the need for change is both understood and internalized.

The secret to sustainability is in our calendars, our concentration and our communities. Malcom Gladwell tells us it takes 10,000 hours to be the best at anything but more than time it is people that shape us. Many of us credit a mentor, teacher, parent or manager who has guided us along the path but is it those who set us on a path or those who share the path with us that make the greatest difference?

We always become whatever we think about most we move in the direction of our currently dominant thoughts.

Change takes time

We live in an anti-calendar culture obsessed with fast. We thrive on fast food, immediate rewards and instant communications. Careers once considered the pursuit of a lifetime are now measured in months. In spite of our instantaneous obsessions durable transformation in complex systems takes time.

No matter how hard they try nine women can still not make a baby in one month. Our organizational bodies are no less complex than our physical bodies.

All our habits are interdependent and realigning values often requires that we experience enough discomfort to consider new ways of thinking. To avoid the 70% failure rate typical in organizational change we must define a system for providing the right support exactly when and where it is required. None of us became who we are overnight letting go of learned limitations takes time as well.

Change takes attention

We live in a world fueled by fear. Fearful people buy things they don’t need, fawn over people they don’t care about and worry about things that will never happen. Each thought we entertain creates a picture in our minds and every picture has an attraction.

If we think angry thoughts we attract angry outcomes, stress stories beget stressed lives.

These are not the inevitable results of frenetic lives but fractured attention. If we want, peace, prosperity and abundance those must be the things we attend to in our environment and the most significant attractors in our environment are people.

Change takes community

This is the most significant and personally disconcerting realization beginning my fourth decade in the training profession. I am not now, have never been or ever will be good enough to change anyone. Those that have benefited from my teaching have done so not because of the short time they have invested in me but because of the thousands of hours they have invested in helping themselves. I am merely a catalyst. By introducing new ideas in unique and captivating ways I strive to start conversations.

Sometimes those are only the kind of chats people have with themselves but occasionally we create a buzz within a community and that is when the magic happens. By creating opportunities for people to share, explore, experiment and fail we create a place for people to “bee” fearless. Fearless people accomplish more, stress less, are more creative, more resilient, and more engaged. We are not designed to “go it alone” fearless people require fearless communities.

In every day, every moment, every interaction we are either energized or de-energized by the experience.

Peer Powered Performance™ is a system of communication, education, collaboration and illustration that is designed to unleash the creative power of peer influence that energizes innovators, connects collaborators while at the same time disempowering the “debilitators”. Free from political positioning and win-lose withholding communities have both the opportunity and responsibility to discover the truth. We may not all agree what that truth is but the ability to learn from our differences is the foundation for invigoration.

Bee characters and my signature red “chucks” are included throughout as reminders to “Bee” ourselves because, as Oscar Wilde said, “everyone else is already taken“.

Randy Morgan CSP CPC