#143: Making Change Last
I love when pleasurable, restorative experiences can unintentionally spark a new realization about the world, especially when these experiences involve children and young adults. I have always felt that watching those in their youth navigate through their life can shed light upon very valuable lessons and truths to live by. I think Jorgen so creatively parallels his experience climbing with his son to the mission of making meaningful change in the world.
- Amanda
Jorgen van der Sloot jorgen@minkowski.org
Making change last
This summer I went on a family holiday to Croatia. It's a beautiful country with great nature and we planned for a whole lot of activities to do outdoor. One of those activities was rock climbing and it had a great lesson about change in it.
My son Merlijn is 14 years old and back home you can find him twice a week in an indoor climbing venue where he gets trained on different ascends with varying degrees of difficulty. He's been doing it for almost two years now and it was one of the reasons why we wanted to go climbing in Croatia so that he could have the experience of climbing in nature as well. I don't climb at all, but during our summer holiday I made an effort to follow in my sons footsteps (as did my 6 year old daughter and my wife). We went out with a guide and climbed a few routes that we're all easy to do. But then at the end of our time she took us to one that would challenge Merlijn, as she could see it was all too easy for him (for those of you who do climb rocks this was a route with difficulty 5b).
We both climbed the route, first Merlijn and then me. When I got down, proud that I had managed to make it at all, our guide told us that even though I reached the top the difference between me and my son was huge. I was climbing on strength, she said, and Merlijn was climbing with technique. I was a witness to this myself as well. As I was watching him move up the rock, it all looked so light and easy. When you watch good climbers it is almost as if you are watching ballet. The grace with which they are able to move their body against a wall is amazing. Because it looked so easy when Merlijn did it, I made an attempt as well.
My climb probably had a chance of failure of 50% (I'm making this up here) whereas Merlijn's attempt most likely had a chance of failure of only 5%. Or in other words: I could have been seriously hurt (where it not for the security ropes), but there was not a risk at all for that with my son.
Reflecting back on this experience I thought: there is an analogy with change here. If you feel that you want to change, or you feel that your organization should, you could move full force ahead. Many CEO's of companies do this when they launch the new change initiative and no matter what, they keep on pushing forward. Or you could do it gracefully. Meaning: designing a path for change that originates from experience, that is well thought through and in which every step of the process is done with care. I think the latter has a lower risk of having negative side effects than the other. Moreover, a change that is executed graciously will have a better chance of lasting, as each step will be internalized by the organization never to be forgotten again. Just like the steps of Merlijn are something that his body just automatically remembers to do. Go slow and you will get far, go hard and fast and then you will get exhausted and crash earlier...
Jorgen's first-person bio:
I am perhaps a charter member of the Community For Change we are all creating and a facilitator and coach of collaborative strategy development. I work with organizations who seek breakthrough thinking and I have been actively doing this for the last 15 years. I work to design customized think tanks for clients meant to help them see the world from a future perspective, helps them think of innovative solutions and guides them in taking action on their road to the future. My biggest joy in my work is when I see people are smiling as a result of the process they are engaging in with me.
