...then all at once

No one really notices it at first because it's really just a whisper, a random idea thrown around at the end of a meeting or a post-script to an email.

It takes shape in marginalia scribbled in the conference or as you are weeding the backyard or even, as they all seem to, when you are in the shower, that humid incubator of inconveniently timed inspiration.

Soon others in your organization might have the same notion or build on it, and it gets out in the open: this is the Change we could make. This is an Idea we could put into Action.

Some won't like it.

Those with an interest in the status quo - the turf defenders, the rent-seekers, the curmudgeonly - will think of reasons why it's a terrible choice. This Change will cause Harm, they'll say, it's Too Risky or It Won't Pay Off or worst of all, No One Else Has Ever Tried It.

But with each new telling and iteration it gets more accepted and refined. The arguments against it start to ring hollow while the theories in favor become accepted as facts.

When it finally comes to the decision - a vote to move forward or the implementation of the action - it seems like an afterthought, a foregone conclusion, hardly worth the breath of the motion.

Of course we are going to make this change - why wouldn't we?

Change happens slowly, then all at once.*

*With a tip of the hat to Hemingway's riff on how one of his characters went bankrupt in The Sun Also Rises: "Two ways: Gradually... then suddenly."