Agents of Change

Artwork from DannyDraws.

If you're not producing, inspiring, helping spur change, then what are you doing?

I had a brief conversation with my friend from Romania last week. Among other things, she confided in me that she was shocked at how people in her office put in their 9 to 5 every day, taking their sweet time to fulfill their tasks or not, while she does things fast, efficiently, and tries to feel some sense of accomplishment/pride in everything she does. She couldn't understand how her co-workers lived so many hours of their days like that. Granted, this was her first real job in the real world, outside of academia (which may explain the stark contrast), but it made me realize that her discovery wasn't shocking me as much.

I think the average person tends to have a job/jobs, with the goal of making enough income to live comfortably. It's very rare that the job performed is something one feels passionate about or has much intellectual connection with, outside of the paycheck. Fewer people still take personal responsibility or show initiative in a context of something that is ultimately produced by a team, or even for the product of their own work, whether it's part of a larger project or stands on its own.

And it's probably this cultural, social reality that makes it hard for companies to foster innovation, or foster change in any shape or form. In any average corporation, there are a handful of agents of change, and huge number of people who oppose the disturbance of the status quo - for fear of losing the jobs, for fear of needing to learn a new process, for fear of the unknown, etc.

You can have endless innovation groups and spark change every now and then, but sustained innovation is only achieved through teams that are highly motivated and passionate about what they do. It starts with the lowest man on the totem pole and it goes all the way up to managers & company leaders. Any decent manager out there can get a team to produce to a deadline and a budget. However, it takes a true leader to inspire a wide variety of individuals into action/into making things happen.