I ran a workshop last week with some managers who were trying to come to terms with what needs to change to grow the business in the next 5 years. During the first hour or so I heard a lot of the following.
- We can’t do that because…
- That’s a nice approach, but we are a different kind of company because…
- Common sense tells me…
These are all evidence of change-resistant paradigms, they are language patterns I often hear in coaching situations. They’re not necessarily wrong, it’s just if you look at ideas through “why I can’t” glasses, then you’ll get all the reasons for why you can’t, filtering out all of the reasons why you can.
See, in this case the managers’ mindset was one of resistance to change, and this was reflected in their language and attitude. After an hour or so I’d heard enough and I called the session to a halt and asked them to consider the ideas with the following questions.
- How can we make this work?
- How are we similar to that company?
- Common sense told Roger Bannister that the 4 minute mile wasn’t possible, yet within a year of him breaking the barrier, 12 other people ran sub-4 minute miles. Common sense is non-sense!
This reframed the workshop in to one of possibilities and opportunities, of what if’s and how’s instead of why can’t and stay the same. Consequently the workshop became very productive and the mood and level of teamworking improved greatly.
And this reminded me of a story I read about how NASA met JFK’s public announcement of putting a man on the moon within the decade. The story goes that when they looked at what was needed to succeed, the technology necessary was an estimated 30 years away on current roadmaps, so they split the development teams in to the pessimists (why I can’t) and optimists (how can I). The pessimists identified all of the risks and reasons why they couldn’t put a man on the moon, and NASA gave all of these reasons to the optimists, who systematically developed ways that they could solve those problems.
The result, as they say, is history, and the moral, if there is one, is that why I can’t can be a useful question to ask but only if followed by how I can… as NASA proved, we are capable of far more than we think we are, and barring a few simple laws of the universe which may be disproven in time, our ability to achieve is limited only by our self-limiting beliefs and our imagination.
And that was true for the workshop. With that new frame in mind, the group came together in a way I hadn’t seen before. Trust between the team grew before my eyes and the workshop became an open and honest session that made such progress that the Director rang me that evening to say how surprised and delighted he was in what they all came away with.
All that through a simple reframe. I wonder how this approach could help you today?
