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For some people, my last post Suffer More to Change Faster might be a little bit of a downer. After all, suffering is pretty unpleasant, even if it leads to a good place in the end. Fortunately, suffering isn’t the only emotion that can inspire rapid change.

Excitement is the B-side of Suffering. When you are suffering, things are so bad that you just have to change. When you are excited, the future holds so many possibilities that you can’t help but change to make those real.

Comfort is Still the Enemy
No matter how you look at it, nobody wants to change when they are curled up at home in their snuggly pajamas with a cup of hot chocolate! When you are excited, you may not be unhappy, but you are certainly “wound up” and ready for action. That is very different from the type of contentment that a cat napping in a sunbeam feels. Just give a cat a little catnip to see a good visual representation of true excitement.

To change, you have to want things to be different than they are right now. That desire can come from a negative place, but it can also come from a very positive place. For example, I recently read the 4-Hour Workweek and was super inspired by the premise of the book. (In case you’ve been living under a cyber-rock, the book is about freeing yourself from the 9-5 grind through automatic wealth generation, among other things.) Now I’m exploring several ways of going about this very process because I want a radically different lifestyle than the one I am currently living. That comes out of a positive place, but it’s still based in a certain amount of dissatisfaction of my current life.

Create Excitement to Create Change
There are many times that we experience an initial rush of excitement, only to have it fade away. Then we get comfortable again and continue on the same path that we want to change. To me it seems absolutely essential to maintain and even grow excitement over time to use it successful as a change tool. Here are a few techniques that I have found effective in keeping my excitement high.

1. Use Visualization. Imagine the future that you want, as far out in time as you want to take it. Really focus and imagine as many details as possible. If you’d like create a backward storyline that follows the steps you took to get to that future. Repeat your visualization first thing in the morning, or whenever you need a motivational boost.
2. Read and Listen to Motivational Materials. I listen to a lot of podcasts and internet radio that I find motivational or inspirational in some way. Other people gain motivation by reading the stories of people who have accomplished amazing things. Still others watch movies that get their blood pumping. (Fight Club seems to be popular for this :shrug:)
3. Go to a Concert or Sporting Event. Sounds silly, but it works for me. If I’m feeling pretty blah about my life and my goals, I can get my energy up by going to a really great concert and taking in the energy of the crowd. Some people respond better to sports or plays. I think the key is that the event has to have a good sized crowd with really positive energy. Or maybe I’m just a human leech!

Actually, I’m really pumped up just from writing this article. Maybe I should add 4. Try to Help Other People Get Excited!

Are you feeling pretty comfortable in your life, but you feel the need to make some changes? Is your business at a plateau and you want to break through to the next level? If things are okay-but-not-great you can change your situation faster by creating discomfort within your present circumstances.

Comfort is the Enemy
Most people with the hardware and communications access to read this post have it pretty good in life. I’m going to make some assumptions here that probably apply to 99% of us: you have (more) than enough food to eat; you have a roof over your head every night; you have activities to fill your days; and you have enough money left at the end of the month for a small indulgence or two. In other words, most of the time, in most of the things you do, you are comfortable.

You may consider this a good thing. If you want to change, it’s not a good thing. Comfort is holding you back. If you are content with the way things are, you won’t be motivated to change.

A cat napping in a sunbeam is pretty content and comfortable. Generally, if you want to get that cat to move, you can:

• Wait for the cat to finish its nap and move on. Any cat owner can attest that this can take a loooong time!
• Spray some water on the cat, give it a nudge, or disturb it in some other way.

People don’t seem to be any different. Even though we may Plan to Change and Desire to Change, without enough motivation, we won’t take Actions Toward Change.

In thinking back on my post The Moment of Choice, I realized that I was able to make changes in my life more quickly at times when I was miserable. Here’s a personal example:

During my first semester as an undergraduate, I was a theater major. I had done some acting and writing in high school and really enjoyed it, so I decided to pursue formal training and see if I could make a career out of my art. The problem was, I didn’t really like the subject.

This was kind of an issue for a couple of months, but I was still new to college and having fun exploring my campus and new city. Plus, I did enjoy the discounted theater tickets and class outings that went along with my studies. I knew it wasn’t a good fit, but I just wasn’t motivated to do anything about it.

Until the Othello workshop.

I had a semi-crazy instructor for a theater class and one week our assignment was to memorize a monologue from Shakespeare’s Othello and workshop it. In this workshop, we were told to jump and run and skip and moan, and worst of all, Be The Punctuation. Now, I can “be” a lot of things – a baby, a rabbit, maybe even a car – but a semicolon?

How does that work, exactly? How does a semicolon act?

As I looked around the room filled with 20 other college freshman enthusiastically “being” the semicolon, I had an epiphany. Those people were not MY people. I had to change my major, immediately! And I did. By 5pm the next day, I had a new major (which is later changed, but that’s another story)!

Create Suffering to Create Change
I later realized that I could have save a lot of time by changing my major as soon as I began to feel like it wasn’t a fit. However, I was still far enough in my comfort zone that I didn’t feel motivated to do that. To get myself moving faster, I could have applied one of these techniques for increasing suffering and creating an effective mindset for change.

1. Take it to the Extreme. You may have heard of programs that get people to quit smoking by making them smoke so many cigarettes in a row that they literally turn green. That sounds kind of dangerous, but I think this could be applied to other behaviors safely. For example, I get annoyed by how much I say, “so…” to end a sentence. It makes me sound timid. To get over this habit, I could go around ending every sentence with “so…” for a couple of days which will aggravate me so much I will become totally self-conscious about it and quit.
2. Picture the Future. In this exercise, sit in a quiet room for five minutes and picture in painstaking detail what your situation will look like in five years if you continue on the same course. Imagine what type of people you will be around, what you will do, how much money you will have, how you will feel, even what clothes you’ll be wearing. Try not to exaggerate, just focus really hard on the behaviors and circumstances that will be present if you don’t make the change you are considering. I have definitely used this technique to decide if I wanted to continue relationships. At times when I have pictured the future, it wasn’t pretty! I realized that I needed to end a relationship to get more fulfillment out of my life.
3. Remove the Comfort Zone. At one point in my life I was very tight on money and realized that I needed to change my spending habits if I was going to stay out of debt. Because I didn’t have a lot of willpower to do that, I decided to put obstacles in place to make it more difficult to spend money. First, I stopped carrying more than $20 cash. I carried my ATM card, but it didn’t work as a debit card at the time, so I had to physically go to an ATM if I needed more money. I also had a very low limit on my one and only credit card. These obstacles helped me change my mindset over time, but I had changed my behavior almost immediately, which I had to do to be successful.

If you remove the tools, people, or circumstances that allow you to engage in an undesirable behavior, it becomes much harder to continue in your present path.

The point of this post is not to depress you. Rather, I hope I’ve inspired you to examine your own comfort zones and find ways to get away from them if you genuinely want to change. Of course, it’s okay to NOT want to change, but this should be an honest decision, and not a behavior brought on by entropy.

If you have other ways to accelerate a personal change, please share them in the comments below.

I recently had the chance to both plan and participate in a two day conference that used Open Space Technology. This event was the most enjoyable conference I have ever attended, and probably the most energizing. In part that was due to the awesome group of people that participated, but also because of the incredible freedom that Open Space allows. It seems like a great format to use when trying to solve problems of change at an organizational or larger level.

What is Open Space?
Open Space Technology isn’t a new gadget or type of internet connection. It’s a set of tools for “organizing” (you’ll understand in a short while why that word is in quotes) a meeting or conference. An Open Space meeting is as unlike a traditional, agenda-driven meeting as you could possibly have without outright chaos. At an Open Space event, every participant has equal responsibility for setting the agenda, choosing discussion topics, participating in topics, and closing the event.

Anyone can lead a discussion. Participants are not obligated to stay with a discussion from beginning to end. Rather, they can come and go as they please and go where their energy takes them. The only restrictions are that the discussions should relate to the theme of the event and everyone should follow the rules explained below.

Planning
The logistics for an Open Space event are somewhat different from a traditional conference. Because people tend to wander around and you can’t predict when a discussion will end, or even how many discussions will occur, room and food arrangements have to be flexible. We handled this by:

• Starting every morning with a high-protein breakfast and an opening. The breakfast was to fuel everyone up for lots of good discussion. The opening provided a small amount of structure and got everyone on the same page. One morning we had a speaker summarize the topic of discussion and provide some background information. The next morning we summarized the discussions from the previous day.
• Having many types of spaces available for discussion. Because the event was in the summer, we had indoor and outdoor spaces available. We were also able to reserve traditional classroom type spaces and less formal lounge areas.
• Sticking with buffet meals. We made sure food was available for at least 2 hours and chose portable foods so that everyone could eat when it was the best time for them.
• Keeping a central Marketplace and information area. The Marketplace is where participants sign up to lead discussions and post where they are meeting. Conference staff also manned the information area in case anyone got confused or needed help making dinner reservations.

The Rules
Open Space does have some very important rules that make the difference between a successful event and chaos.

• Law of 2 Feet. Every participant has the right and responsibility to use their own 2 feet. This means that they should choose conversations that interest them. When their interest wantes, it’s time to move on
• Keep Notes. In order to document the discussions and suggestions in a way that allows for progress, one person in every conversation needs totake responsibility for taking notes. To make this easier, we provided a template.
• The Four Principles. These help people get into the right state of mind:
  1. Whooever Comes are the Right People
  2. Whatever Happens is the Only Thing That Could Have
  3. Whenever it Starts is the Right Time
  4. When it’s Over, it’s Over

The Moment of Truth
On that first morning of the event, after the opening presentation, we opened the marketplace to the participants. Then we waited. A flood of thoughts ran through my head. “What if no one has a topic? What if no one wants to join any of the topics? Have I just put over a year of my life into planning a failed experiment?!”

Within 30 seconds people started filling in spots and organizing topics. Within 5 minutes nearly every available space was taken and we started to smile. Within 10 minutes the building was filled with engaged conversations and we were ecstatic. This stuff really works!!

The Results
This event spanned two days and a total of about 10 hours of actual Open Space. Day 1 focused on defining the issue and problems at hand and Day 2 was about suggesting solutions. The participants did a great job on problem definition and came up with some solid solution possibilities.

The greatest benefit of using the Open Space format is that everyone had a voice in the process, and therefore they had buy-in in the solutions. This can make a change process so much easier! Rather than dealing with resistance from a top-down or poorly fitting solution, the Open Space process takes the time to unearth a solution that feels right for everyone. Is it possible to have a crush on a meeting format?

For Further Research

• Michael Herman is definitely THE MAN when it comes to Open Space. I’m sure he’s also the Man in several other respects, but I don’t know what those might be. Anyways, he maintains a great site that has everything you need to plan an Open Space event from beginning to end.
• Harrison Owen pioneered Open Space over 20 years ago. His book, Open Space Technology: A User’s Guide, is the definitive guide in the field.
• Finally, check out this great time-lapse video that shows an entire day of Open Space in 30 seconds.

I would love to hear from people who have had experiences with Open Space. Please leave a comment and tell us your story!

Now that we’ve explored the three sets of sliders in a change process - Change vs. Accept It As It Is; Rapid vs. Gradual Change; and Creative Destruction vs. Creative Recombination - it’s time to put the concepts into practice. I thought a personal example would best illustrate how to do this, so I will use my experience with choosing to terminate my service with AmeriCorps.

Background
Immediately after completing my undergraduate degree, I joined the AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps. This program is designed as 10 months of community service within the United States. The NCCC is modeled after the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps and when I was a member it was directed by a retired Army general. Our work was pretty varied, and during my service I provided disaster relief, tutored elementary school students, and gleaned spinach, among lots of other stuff.

I enjoyed the service work, but the structure of the program was quite military. All the Corps members were assigned to teams of 12-15 people, with one team leader. We lived together, worked together, and socialized together. Our rules of conduct were pretty strict. We had weekly living quarters inspections, there were many limits on drinking alcohol and dating other Corps members (these were widely ignored), and we had to wear a uniform that consisted of some very unflattering cargo pants and grey t-shirts.

Now, I’ve never been one for following orders, and I found the structure of the program quite restrictive. At the time I was 22 years old, had lived on my own for a few years, and knew how to take care of myself. I wasn’t very receptive to someone telling me how to make my bed or what to drink. Did I mention I got paid $75 a week and food stamps? And we had to travel everywhere in a 15 passenger Chevy van? After 4 or 5 months of that, I was pretty unhappy and began to seriously consider leaving.

Change vs. Accept It As It Is
For me the hardest point in the change process is deciding to make a change. I sat at that dreaded 5 for several weeks. Part of me wanted to honor my commitment to serve and do whatever good I was able to during the few months of service I had left. Another part of me was tired, stressed out and physically run down. I also had to opportunity to leave the Corps and almost immediately start a reasonably well paying job, which only increased my inner conflict.

I did everything I could think of to avoid making a decision. My friends received long, whiny phone calls and emails asking for advice. I made Pros & Cons lists. I took long walks and paced a lot.

Finally I made the leap and decided to leave. Once I was at a 10 it was time to start strategizing how to implement the change.

Rapid vs. Gradual Change
When I made my decision, my team was in the middle of a 6 week project. It just happened that the project would be finished just before Easter. While other people had suddenly quit and left the Corps (one guy left literally in the middle of the night), I didn’t want to be unfair to my teammates. I also needed to contact my future employer and make sure my job was still available.

I decided to be more gradual (I’d say a 4 on a 1-10 scale with 1 being slow as mud) in my approach. I told my teammates and the program directors that I would be leaving with plenty of notice. While many people tried to persuade me to stick around, my mind was made up. AmeriCorps has a lot of paper work involved with terminating service early, so I took care of all that. I got the oil changed in my car, packed up, and left on Good Friday.

I drove about 12 hours through pouring rain. When I was 30 miles from home, the sky cleared and a rainbow appeared over the highway. I felt better than I had in a looong time.

Creative Destruction vs. Creative Recombination
While my time in AmeriCorps was far from ideal, I took a lot of good away from my experiences. I could have quit the Corps, gotten a job making tons of money, and never helped anyone again. But I didn’t do that.

My community service experience really helped me solidify some values that had been half-formed already. Those values led me into a career that provides service in a less direct way (I don’t tear down drywall much anymore), but still stays true to my experiences. In a way, I guess I’ve recombined elements that were already within me to serve a new purpose.

Conclusion
As I hope my example illustrates, change is a process, not a single moment in time. There are many decision points in any change process - many more than the three steps I’ve outlined. Whether you are working at a personal level, or implementing change in a Fortune 500, it is important to be strategic in a change process and use the many options and tools available to reach the best possible outcome.

I welcome any examples of changes that anyone would like to share in the comments.

In my original Sliding Scales post I introduced the concepts of creative destruction and creative recombination. These terms come from Eric Abrahamson’s book Change Without Pain.

Creative destruction means that the change is huge, sweeping, and attempts to be a fresh start. At an organizational level a company might implement creative destruction by selling off a division or completely relocating operations to a new state. At a personal level, leaving the country and completely re-designing your lifestyle certainly qualifies as an 8 or 9.

Creative recombination, on the other hand, attempts to use systems and structures that are already in place to accomplish a new purpose. The changes are more gradual and less disruptive than creatively destructive change. Organizational creative recombination could include establishing cross-functional teams to pollinate ideas through their networks. Personal creative recombination could be as minor as using existing jobs skills in a new position.

Now that the definitions are set, how do we choose what setting on the 1-10 scale to employ? Here are 3 questions to ask:

Is there anything to recombine?
In a genuinely corrupt, degraded, or obsolete system, the raw materials needed for recombination might not be available. The less there is to work with and recombine, the more a situation calls for destruction and rebuilding. On a physical level I am reminded of a building I drive by everyday. Several months ago this old factory building was in the process of being renovated into housing. Sadly the building caught fire and burnt beyond the point of salvage. Now it is sitting, decaying and waiting to be bulldozed.

The same conditions can arise in an individual life or in an organization. In cities and departments that are rife with corruption, voters have been known the “throw the bums out” in hope of cleansing the system and starting again. Personal relationships can become so toxic that there is no reasonably choice other than moving on.

How much resistance is there to change?
In his book, Abrahamson believes that companies that have become change avoiders can benefit from large scale creative destruction. It may seem counterintuitive to recommend the most drastic change to those who resist it the most, but overwhelming the resistance may be the only way to make change take root. Attempting to recombine elements when those elements are digging in their heels to stop all progress is setting yourself up for failure.

Addicts provide a good example of people who vehemently resist change. In many cases of addiction, only a complete and sudden withdrawal - going “cold turkey” - can help the addict break the habit. On the other extreme, people interested in personal development often find that they can’t integrate sweeping change all at once. Rather, they slowly incorporate new habits and priorities into the framework of their existing lives. Over time, the change can be quite dramatic, but it is a very gradual process.

How fast is the change needed?
The existence of a genuine crisis plays a role here as well. Creative recombination takes time to make an impact. Destruction and reconstruction can be much quicker. In a company that is threatened by an agile and powerful new competitor, it may be necessary to completely reconfigure how business is done.

Because creative destruction can be difficult and painful, it shouldn’t be used lightly. Asking individuals or organizations to endure large scale change time and time again almost inevitably results in change fatigue. This fatigue will lead to resistance to change, which will necessitate even more radical changes.

Do you see the vicious circle here?

Change when needed, but keep enough stability so that the system doesn’t fall apart.

In the next post, I’ll conclude this series and provide an overview of the change process. If you have any experience with creative destruction or creative recombination, please share your stories in the comments.