Episode 8 - Change Making
How do we take our intent forward? Charting the way forward, idea generation, leaving your ego at the door, protoyping and more.
Quotes
The outcome of this first piece of work when we're going to make change is getting the scope and clarity and the intent shared.If you're on the receiving end of an initiative which somebody else thought up, then this is the time you really need to drill into what it is they think they want you to do.
Pushing for clarity is not an accusation about anything having been sloppy or lazy. It's about the fact that now that you're looking at a specific context with a specific bunch of resources.
Clarifying the intent is the first stage of moving in to change making. The next stage is a discovery. We actually need to understand more about the specific context that we're going to change.
Make life easier for yourself by bringing some of that research back inside and start putting photos of successful initiatives up on the wall.
Start bringing some of that back and widening the “socialising “ - the awareness of what's going on. Don't spring it on people.
Make sure that dissenting voices are heard. There might be wisdom in them. There might not be. But hear them, because if they don’t surface at the stage of coming up with plans, they're going to surface when the brickwork starts.
Early brainstorming as done by marketing groups in the fifties and so forth was really disconnected from context. It really had nothing to do with what a customer might want or what a context of use might look like.
We don't want underdeveloped or bad ideas to go forward, and so
we assess, understand, unpack with rigour - out of faithfulness, not out of vindictiveness.
In Christian communities being nice means I won't criticize. And it condemns us to mediocrity. We're never allowed to say that something is strong and something is not. And the truth is that some things are strong and some are not.
Our next stage in change making is to actually build something to put in the world, to test out the ideas. This is the idea of prototyping. It's not piloting. Piloting is when you build the first version of what you expect to last forever.
This is the feature of prototypes vs pilots: We actually build pieces of a prototype to find out what breaks. We want to see if we can break things because we learn from that.
Even if it's a mock up on a piece of paper or a cardboard box that imitates some function, get people around it so they can actually pull forward the experience of what it will be like, and you'll save yourself a world of pain.
Something is a failure when you set out to do it and it grinds to a halt after six weeks because it's simply unsustainable. Prototyping is not a failure. It's a brilliant way of discovering and learning and making sure that things can be sustainable.
References
Luke 14:25-33 ESV
25 Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them,26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. 27 Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.
28 For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? 29 Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, 30 saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’
31 Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? 32 And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace.
33 So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.
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