I wrote recently that most people I speak to are essentially problem-solvers: people who are trying to iterate, evolve and drive change in their day-to-day lives, be it in their work or their passions.
Theorising change is relatively easy – but many people I know find it incredibly difficult to actually implement change. This is essentially the motion/action paradox – an ideology I came across while reading the brilliant Atomic Habits by James Clear.
Motion – working towards change – is easy. Action – implementing that change – is hard.
So how can we make change simple?
The answer lies in understanding why change is hard and facing it down with the stop-destroy-go method.
Why is change important?
Lack of evolution is the single biggest consistent threat to an organisation’s survival.
From Blockbuster video being ousted by online streaming (notably Netflix) to online retail threatening the existence of the high-street, there are endless examples of businesses that have failed to evolve and then failed to survive.
In sport, we see the same principle – people get faster, teams get better, and only those that similarly evolve keep-up.
To evolve, something has to change. Services and products have to become cheaper, faster or better, muscles have to become stronger, more powerful and more accurate.
But to implement change we have to overcome motion, with action.
Motion
Motion is the feeling of progress, rather than actual progress. Motion is the idea, the research and the preparation.
There’s nothing wrong with motion. By definition, it’s present before every action. You can’t purposefully create change without first deciding change is needed.
But ironically, motion is also the enemy of action. Spending time on motion at the expense of action doesn’t create change, it only creates the feeling of change.
The more time you spend planning which sport to take up, the less time you spend actually playing sport and consequently, you gather less information as to whether this particular sport is the right one for you or not.
Planning which sport to take up is motion, playing sport is action.
This brings us to a critical point: It’s better to make the wrong decision and learn from it quickly than to make no decision at all.*
*This is the principle of the lean start-up, a method employed by millions of businesses to quickly understand if their ideas have validity and to prevent the wasting of money on ideas that don’t work
Why we’re more comfortable creating motion than delivering action
The answer to this lies in Newton’s first law of motion, which states:
“An object either remains at rest or continues to move at a constant velocity unless acted upon by a force.”
People and organisations are no different to objects – we find it easier to continue doing what we’ve been doing, rather than doing something new. And the longer we’ve been doing something, the more force that’s required for us to stop, let alone change direction.
The key to change, therefore, lies in applying enough force, through action.
Action
Action is actually doing something, rather than thinking about doing something.
Action is going for a run, rather than planning your route or ordering some running shoes.
Action is change!
People find action difficult for two reasons:
- They get hung-up on what could go wrong
- They struggle to overcome their current state
Getting past what could go wrong
When we make decisions, we have a natural tendency to go in to fight or flight mode, which makes us feel like our existence in under threat. However big these decisions may feel when we’re under pressure, in reality, 99% are reversible and aren’t individually threatening.
Most decisions we need to make centre around small changes that contribute to an overall bigger evolution. As a result, the potential damage of one wrong decision is minimal, especially compared to the prospect of doing nothing, as we looked at earlier.
The easy way to overcome this hang-up is to ask yourself ahead of any decision: ‘What’s the absolute worst thing that could happen if we get this wrong?’. And then compare that answer to ‘What’s the absolute worst thing that could happen if we do nothing?’. The answer to the later is often more frightening than the former.
On top of that, getting something wrong provides you with quick, valuable learning to base your next decision on. The feedback from making a wrong decision, helps us make the right one.
Overcoming your current state
As Newton explained, our current velocity is a powerful force. We feel more comfortable and less threatened by what is familiar to us, so we innately prefer to continue doing what we’re used to.
To overcome this at the agency I manage, we developed our ‘stop-destroy-go’ method, based around one of our values: Destruction is a form of creation.
To overcome your default mechanism to continue as you always have done, simply:
Stop – doing whatever you’re doing. It doesn’t matter what that is, but whatever you’re trying to change, stop what you’re doing in that area. This stops your current path and velocity, making it easier to change direction.
Destroy – what you used to do. Want to change your gym programme? Rip-up the old one. Want to stop using email? Delete your mail client. Destroying what you currently have creates a need to implement a new solution, rather than just thinking about it.
Go – implement a new way. You’ve stopped your old habit and destroyed the old process, now you have no choice but to deliver action.
We’ve tried many different approaches to implementing change, but ‘stop-destroy-go’ has been by far our most successful. As we said, destruction is a form of creation.
Wrapping-up
Change is hard – but in the long run, not implementing change is harder. It causes you to panic further down the line, when the stakes are a lot higher and the consequences of getting it wrong are a lot greater.
Key to delivering change is to understand the difference between motion and action and to embrace the reasons why change is difficult.
Once you’ve done that, you can face your obstacles head-on and overcome them simply and quickly with the stop-destroy-go method.
However you implement change, I’d love to hear about it on Twitter.
