The Simple Mathematics of Change
“The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change.”
— Carl Rogers
Have you ever wondered why a seemingly obvious/easy change isn’t happening or seems to be taking a long time to happen? Often, when I wonder why a change initiative isn’t happening, I’m told, “Because it will take too much time and effort.” So, I’ve been wondering, is this a fallacy or does it really take an inordinate amount of time and effort to implement change?
The ‘it takes too much time and effort’ argument is a common fear tactic. However, the real issue lies deeper. Change often evokes a sense of dread in educators, with new tasks piling on top of existing workloads.
What if change projects created a sense of delight rather than a sense of dread?
When I worked for NoTosh with schools to help them develop their vision, mission, and strategy, the collaborative change teams often used a sorting quadrant to help schools develop the actions needed.
We would prompt heterogeneous, collaborative groups of 3ish in the design team to consider the data we’d collected and affinity mapped, and ask a series of 4 questions about each cluster:
- To make this happen, what might we need to remove?
- To make this happen, what might we need to advance?
- To make this happen, what might we need to downsize?
- To make this happen, what might we need to establish?
Teams would list one action in each quadrant for each cluster. For example, for a cluster entitled ‘play’, they might write something like…
Inevitably, however, the Advance and the Establish quadrants would always end up having much longer lists of action items than Remove or Downsize. This just added to the dread of change equating to a higher workload; more time and effort.
Imagine change initiatives that spark excitement instead of dread. What if we framed change as a way to lighten workloads and improve efficiency? This, my friends, is the power of ‘delightful change’.
To make change more manageable, we can recalibrate the parameters, showing our communities that we want to remove and downsize their workloads. That makes change delightful.
What if, to make change delightful, we used some simple math?
To truly make change delightful, we can leverage the power of simple math. Let’s introduce a “delightful math” equation: for every new initiative we implement (Advance/Establish), we aim to reduce workload by a factor of two (Downsize/Remove) through streamlining existing processes or eliminating unnecessary tasks. This ensures that change doesn’t just add to the burden; it creates space for improvement and growth. ie. 1 x Advance = 2 x Downsizes, 1 x Establish = 2 x Remove.
Let’s make change delightful! Why not experiment with this formula for your own change projects and share your experiences in the comments. Together, we can transform change from a burden to an opportunity!
Read about how to avoid everythingitis here.
