The news is filled with bad news about the environment, climate disasters, wars … and many leaders do not seem to be doing much about it. Things can feel pretty hopeless.
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There is reason for hope
First, more and more people trying to figure out how to change the world. So, you will have good company as you figure out what might create some of the change we need..
Second, even unsuccessful attempts to create change move us forward. The more we learn from successes and failures, the better we will get at creating what we want and what we need. We either move a step forward, or we learn.
Third, with each attempt to create change, we get a much better sense of what is possible, and where the ‘cracks’ in the status quo might be.
One of the best pieces of good news is that many of the people creating relevant change are ones who are not ‘experts’. Many of the people making the change we need are ‘inexperienced’. But they have learned how to use this ‘lack of experience’ to their advantage.
You don’t need to be a change expert to create change
The people with less expertise find it easier to be deeply curious and to take (smart) risks and experiment. In contrast, people who are recognized as ‘experts’ often have a lot to lose; they don’t want to be curious or do experiments as they might look bad.
But you do need to be strategic
To create real change with little expertise means not just jumping in with strong emotions, but rather to leverage the power of curiosity, co-learning, and co-creating. These are all things that are not taught in school and not rewarded in business. (Many argue that school and business actually force us to unlearn those things.)
To be effective in making change with little experience or formal expertise means being wise in the approach. This includes learning how to:
- continuously deepen and broaden your understanding of the problem (ie what do you currently believe is happening and why);
- engage like-minded – but diverse – people where you can mutually deepen and broaden each other’s understanding; and,
- experiment to figure out what works.
What is really different about this approach is embracing uncertainty and not-knowing, not having ‘answers’
- The world today will not be the world tomorrow because everything is changing more than it ever has.
- Therefore, there are no ‘answers’. There are only better questions so you can understand the situation better and from more perspectives.
- And once you’ve got some ideas on what might create the results you want, then