You don’t like change

You don’t like change.  You say you do and often you think you do, but truth is we all have a place on the change journey that feels like we have gone far enough when (to quote the great Karen Carpenter) “We’ve only just begun”.

I have been thinking a lot about change recently.  How does it happen?  Why do we resist it?  Why is it so easy to tweak – and does that ever lead to real change?

One observation that I have made is that there seems to be a curve of sorts related to change that looks a little like this:

During the low-hanging fruit stage (LHFS) we all like change (except for those just adverse to change at all).  That is why the board hires the young new pastor to come “change” things but are blown away when he moves out of the LHFS, they think he will stay in the safe zone and tweak away. Tweak land is comfort land.

But at some point we have to actually make real and radical change (if we want to actually change) and leave behind the low-hanging fruit.  That is where most of us (me included) stop.  That is fun, safe and everyoine like you.  You gave them their tweaks and no more.  Good job. Now go away. We think we have changed.  We think we are making continuous improvements when in reality it is  just starting to be “go time”.

That is when it gets very hard.  The number of followers excited with with you reduce drastically.  It actually goes to bottom at some point and you may be the only one who believes in the change – until you have success.

Success then breads success and in an uptake all of the sudden there is growth and lots of adoption to this “new idea” (most people will never know the whole journey thta’s ok) until we ultimately make the drastic change so successful that is becomes the base-line and we plateau – thus needing to change again…

Have you found yourself dropping out too soon on an idea?  How do you motivate yourself to push through?  What is a big change you have made and seen this play out?