Change it up!

When my kids were younger I was quite a sucker for Disney movies, for besides being pretty good TV for my children (other than the occasional miss), they proved to be a goldmine for complementary management lessons I could take to work. Carefully chosen video clips are great for spicing up an otherwise run-of-the-mill staff meeting.

A favorite scene for me was in the Mighty Ducks movie about a group of young misfits finding camaraderie and their youthful purpose as an emerging hockey team. In this particular scene their errant coach is m.i.a. for a crucial game, and they convince their school-assigned tutor to pretend she is their coach so they won’t have to forfeit the game.

As you might imagine, she has no clue about hockey and just slightly more about coaching them, but she recognizes a downhill slide when she sees it, and gestures helplessly as the game deteriorates.

“This is not working! What do we do?” she asks a benched team captain in desperation, and he replies, “Just stand up there where they can see and hear you, and yell, ‘Change it up!’”

She looks at him as if to say, yeah right, that will help, but not having any better ideas she fills her lungs and screams, “Change it up!”

Almost instantly, players scramble to change positions and try a different play sequence. The tutor still doesn’t really understand what’s going on, but she’d mustered the momentary confidence to direct them, and in fearlessly changing course, trusting in her direction, the players snap out of the auto-pilot of their losing streak’s grip. The game starts to turn in their favor, and soon victory is theirs.

As the saying goes, “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.” If you want more, or you want different, you’ve got to “Change it up!”

Describing the scene has become a favorite way for me to explain to managers about the positives that can come with change. The movie was pretty popular, for heads would nod and there would be smiles in remembrance as Disney would deliver a great analogy for me time and time again. The best way to look at change is with that expectancy of shift; change makes things happen. The change itself is rarely good or bad; what makes it appear one way or the other is the way we humans handle it.

There’s two kinds of change

There’s bad change, and there’s good change. Here’s the rub: The exact same change can be either one or the other depending on our point of view about it. Normally it seems to work something like this:

When change happens TO us, and gets imposed on us, causing us to be reactive, we think of it as bad change. It shakes up our sense of security, and makes things unpredictable. We scramble to do the best we can, but it’s pretty stressful.

On the other hand, good change is change we intentionally and deliberately CHOOSE; we use it for the catalyst it has the potential to be, so we can get more than we’ve gotten before. We “Change it up!” on purpose. The phrase we usually use for this good change? Strategic Initiatives. Initiative.

Bad change is imposed and involuntary. Good change is initiated and championed.

With bad change people react as victims. With good change, they take actions they choose as leaders.

Change is going to happen one way or another. So choose it. Design it. Plan it. Execute it.

Ho‘o — make things happen.

Ho‘ohana — make things work, and make ‘em work your way.

If the Mighty Ducks could do it playing a seemingly hopeless hockey game, so can you.
~ Rosa Say

Postscript: This posting has been newly edited from another which originally appeared at Talking Story with Say Leadership Coaching. You can click over there to read comments and a trackback by JJLers Chris Owen and Dean Boyer.

What have you learned from the movies? You can get published on Joyful Jubilant Learning too! ~~~ May Details here

Post author Rosa Say is the author of Managing with Aloha, Bringing Hawaii's Universal Values to the Art of Business, and she currently writes for Managing with Aloha Coaching, Value your Month, Value your Life.

Rosa also serves as the managing editor of Joyful Jubilant Learning; her letter for 2008 can be found on our About Page.

For all of Rosa's writing aggregated in just one place, visit her Tumblr, Ho‘ohana Aloha.

Comments

[Steve Sherlock]

Thanks Rosa! Change it up is a good one. This month will be fun because movies are good at telling stories (at least the good ones are). The more memorable the story telling the better the lessons will travel to home, to work, to where ever! Thanks fr getting us off to a good start.

[Pam]

Love this reminder, Rosa!! Thank you so much for sharing it and in such a powerful way. Yep, "change it up" unless you are happy with the results you are getting. :) Sometimes all it takes is stepping one foot outside of the box. Change is good, even change that does not feel so good at the time. Change forces us to grow and to add to our experiences or what I like to consider our life toolbox.

[Rosa Say]

Steve I will admit to having a short attention span for most movies, and so particular scenes within them prove to be my lesson teachers. And you're right~ their stories can travel so well to so many different contexts... even when I haven't watched the whole movie.

It's actually a kind of joke in my family that to watch a movie with me it's best to get me in a theatre with popcorn and all the trappings. Pop in a DVD at home, and after a while I'm off the couch and doing something else instead; too many competing distractions. Guess you could say I change it up often!

[Rosa Say]

Pam, your optimism in saying that change is good reminded me of a quote I'd clipped at one time from organizational change pioneer Richard Beckhard. He said, "People do not resist change; people resist being changed."

Being able to break through resistance to look for the growth you mention is indeed a great thing to add to our "life toolbox!"