4 min read · My Compass – Direction East
When you live at the forefront of change long enough, resistance stops feeling like an option. Getting on board isn’t a decision you have to make. It’s just what you do.
You can order a workforce to change and get compliance, or you can go first, show them it’s safe, and build the kind of momentum that eventually wears resistance down.
A Champion doesn’t wait for clarity before committing. They commit early, learn fast, and bring people with them, driven as much by curiosity as by conviction. The moment a workforce senses that someone is asking them to do something they haven’t done themselves, the credibility is gone and resistance creeps in.
· · ·
Nobody Left
Twelve engineers, fresh out of college, sat together in a single room on day one of a revamped training program that had never been tried before. I told them the truth before we started. I had gone through the version that came before this one, I knew it didn’t work, and what we were about to do together had no track record.
If they wanted out, that was their right.
Nobody left.
That is everything the Champion does. Being first into uncertainty, with no promise it will be smooth, is what makes it possible for everyone else to follow. You earn that by standing inside it yourself before you know how the story ends.
What made that room stay was hearing that I’d already failed at this once, and I wasn’t going to lead them down that same path.
For the full story, read The Fishbowl (Read time 12 minutes).
Proof Before the Room
Twenty people’s roles were changing. Asking all of them to move at once, with nothing to point to yet, was something the department couldn’t afford to get wrong. I hand-picked one person to go first. His work didn’t matter more than anyone else’s. I needed proof the change worked before I asked twenty people to follow blindly.
He didn’t know how this change was going to unfold. He just knew I’d asked him to trust the process, and that’s what he did. He cleaned up his own piece of the system, end to end, and it gave him a large chunk of time back in his work week.
That is also the Champion. Asked to walk into the uncertainty alone for the sake of his peers, and trusted to carry it.
People don’t adopt change because they’re told it works. They adopt it because they watched someone they already trusted go first and come out ahead.
For the full story, read The Technical Problem Wasn’t Technical (Read time 9 minutes).
The Hands in the Room
Ten minutes’ notice to say a few words at a Christmas party, half the room new hires who didn’t know anyone yet. The safe speech disappeared the moment I looked out and remembered exactly what it felt like to be new in a room like that. I asked every new employee to raise a hand. Then I turned to leadership, people I had no authority to direct, and told them to look around, find those hands, and go introduce themselves before the night was over.
Every one of them did.
Nobody in that room owed me that. I hadn’t earned it that night, on that stage, with ten minutes of notice. I’d earned it over years, leading others, watching, and listening, and it was sitting there waiting for the moment I needed it.
For the full story, read New Faces from the Stage (Read time 6 minutes).
· · ·
What Actually Determines Whether Change Takes Hold
Every change initiative eventually reaches the same moment. The plan is built. The message has gone out. Leadership has aligned around the direction.
Then the workforce looks around the room to see who moves first.
That moment matters more than the plan itself. People take their cue from each other. They watch how the room reacts, and that moves them long before the plan ever does.
In each of these stories, I didn’t just give the room what it needed. I changed something underneath it and alongside it. I made it safe to tell the truth. I built enough trust that people would follow. I earned the right to ask. Once the dynamic shifts, moving forward takes little convincing.
The Champion changes the conditions in the room until moving forward is the thing people choose for themselves.
Links to the rest of my Personal Operating System