A wise person once said:
Improvement implies change, but change does not imply improvement.
To get improvement on any dimension we need to change something: our location, our perspective, our actions, our decisions, our assumptions, our beliefs even.
And we hate doing that because we know from life experience that change does not guarantee improvement. Even with well-intended, carefully-considered, and collectively-agreed change … things can get worse. And we fear that. So the safest thing to do is … nothing! We sit on the fence.
Until a ‘fire’ breaks out. Then we are motivated to move by a stronger emotion … fear for our very survival. That bigger fear gives us the necessary push and we move to somewhere cooler and safer.
But as the temperature drops, the fear goes away, the push goes away too and we lose momentum and return to torpor. Until the next fire breaks out.
The other problem with a collective fear-based motivator is that we usually jump in different directions so any shred of cohesion we did have, is lost completely. The system fragments. Fear is always destructive.
The alternative to fear-driven change is a different type of motivator … a burning ambition.
Ambition may feel just as hot but it is different in that it continues to pull and to motivate us. We do not slump back into torpor after the first success. If anything the sense of achievement fuels our fire-of-ambition and that pulls us with greater force.
And when many others share the same burning ambition then we are pulled into alignment on a common purpose and that can become constructive and synergistic … if we work collaboratively.
So let us take health care improvement as the example.
We have a burning platform. The newspapers are full of doom-and-gloom about escalating waits, failed targets, weekend mortality effects, spiraling costs and political conflict.
But do we have a collective burning ambition? A common goal? A shared purpose?
A common goal like a health care system that is safe, delivers on time, meets and exceeds expectation and is affordable ?
If we do, then what is the barrier to change? We have push and we have pull … so where is the friction and resistance coming from?
From inside ourselves perhaps? Maybe we harbour limiting beliefs that it is impossible or we can’t do it? Beliefs that self-justify our ‘do nothing’ decision.
So only one example that disproves our limiting beliefs is enough to remove them. Just one. And I shared a video of it last week – the Luton & Dunstable one.
And the animated video by Dr Peter Fuda captures the essence of this push-and-pull Kurt Lewin Force Field concept brilliantly!