Pick Up Some Yards on 1st Down

If you’re a fan of the NFL, you may have noticed something about the Divisional-Round playoff games this past weekend. The victorious teams didn’t triumph because of last second, miracle plays – Patrick Mahomes’ 13-second drive for a game-tying field goal might count as a miracle but they needed the prior 26 points to have a chance. The same can be said of teams that came from behind to almost win. These were games of smaller plays adding up to big wins.

This is also true of what’s required to enact consequential, long-lasting change. Heroics never work. Trying to do it “all at once” never works. Steady progress down the field towards the goal line is what works.

Leaders change the order of things for the better and solve festering problems. To do so, leaders have aspirational goals and an ambitious Future State in mind. In order to galvanize, catalyze and begin a change process, the destination Future State must be inspiring and clearly better than the Current State. However, in order to sustain momentum so as to actually arrive at that Future State, leaders need to start with what they know they can accomplish and achieve some quick wins. Leaders must then continue their journey with step-by-step, steady progress.

So often I see aspiring leaders stumble because they think they need to tackle the hardest, biggest things first. “I have these big goals so I must start with big things.” Wrong. If you want to achieve big things, start with smaller, more obvious things. There are two reasons for this.

1)?????Change is hard. In order to accomplish new things, individuals and teams need to learn new things, try new things and eventually, successfully do new things. Imagine that your New Year’s Resolution was to “get in shape.” To sustain yourself on this journey, you literally need to build up your capability. You don’t start your first visit to the gym with the ultimate bench press. You don’t start your first morning run with a half- marathon. If you start at, or close to, your desired Future State, you will probably injure or exhaust yourself and fall short. And this would discourage you. Instead, you work up to it.

The same is true in every organization. We must build a team’s capacity over time. We start with what we know we can do and work up to what we want to do. And along the way, we are also building confidence in our newly developing capability. As our competence and confidence grow, our determination to achieve our goals is reinforced. And so, in order to achieve big goals and accomplish big change, we start with what we know we can achieve now. We take small steps, we make steady progress, we look for quick wins. And as we build our confidence and our capacity, our steps get bigger, our progress gets faster, and our wins get more consequential.

2)?????Skepticism is the real enemy of change. While resistance to change is inevitable and ever-present, resistance alone won’t impede progress or derail change. Resistance just comes with the territory. What will derail change is too many people standing on the sidelines. Change cannot be sustained without momentum, and momentum is achieved when people get off the sidelines and decide to enlist in making change happen. Successful change requires skeptics to embrace the Future State and do their part to make it happen.

?At the beginning of any change program, most people (around 60% in my experience) are skeptics. They aren’t dedicated resistors, but they aren’t fully on-board either. They are doing what they’ve always done and waiting to see what happens. Smart leaders therefore focus on the skeptics and what it takes to convince them to “get in the game.”

Skeptics are convinced by success. They are convinced by progress. They are convinced by those early, quick wins that demonstrate that the Future State is not one more mis-guided top-down initiative or over-hyped strategic intent. Skeptics move when clear progress convinces them that the Future State is both worthy and achievable. Then they decide to contribute.

Back to the football analogy. We all love the drama and suspense of the Hail Mary pass. The stats tell us they usually fail. The less glamorous field goal turns out to matter more – just ask the Bengals, 49ers, Rams and Chiefs (and their opponents)!

Want to accomplish big things? Know clearly where you want to go. Describe that Future State often and remind people why the journey from where you are to where you need to go is important and worthwhile. But move deliberately down the field towards your goal. Build your capacity for change step-by-step and get some points on the board. Don’t leave the bulk of your team on the sidelines. You need critical mass to succeed.