Change by the power of ONE

Nicky Carew writes about how important it is that YOU are a Change Maker now.

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Change by the power of ONE.

And by one – I mean you!

There are many facts we know to be true:

Napoleon was short.
The Great Wall of China is visible from space.
Your left and right brains have different talents.
75% of all change programmes fail.

In fact NONE of these are true. All are urban myths. But they persist because they are great stories and, in particular the last 2, they mean we can explain why something doesn’t go the way we hoped. Because as we all believe – 75% fail.

Right now change is in the air. A pandemic is making us rethink so many things.

At The Change Maker Group we have to understand the true research and the stats – that guides and informs our work with organisations. 80% of change programmes are actually successful to some extent and some of those are very successful – though first we need to define what success actually means. We know that every single change that happens does so because people make it happen (or not so) so people engagement is critical in this aim. That is how we help organisations create sustainable change.

But ‘people’ has always sounded like ‘other people’. In fact it is each and every one of us. We are discovering now that we are all Change Making – by following guidelines of social distancing, clapping for the Health Service or helping vulnerable others getting through this lockdown. Each and every one of us is making a difference.

So you – the Change Maker – are the power of ONE. You have impact. You can influence. The statistics and probabilities shouldn’t play a part in your Change Making but good practice should. That makes your efforts fit into the positive percentage that worked.

Everything you do infects others – what are you going to do to be a great Change Maker for your life, your organisation, your community?

All you need is the courage to start and some infectious enthusiasm – like the speaker and the characters in the video clip above.

And to help you we have a free resource for all Change Makers out there – The Change Makers Network. It is a community of people who want to make a change, are willing to support each other in mentoring and we have added in dozens of Change Maker micro-learning modules to help with best practise. That’s like watching the magic of a murmuration of thousands of starlings in what seems like impossible cooperation – thousands of individuals who come together and also go their own way to create something spectacular.

In the meantime we are still helping organisations create change by developing their Change Makers – sustainable change right now probably means looking at things in a different way because there is an appetite for a new normal to work for all of us.