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The Snowball Effect: Creating Intentional Change.
Written by: David Wolf
8/18/2010
To effect sustainable change, you must choose to do something differently to get new results. Results that represent what you want in alignment with who you are becoming.
It starts with you. Do what feels right within you, and you’ll enjoy a snowball effect that helps your team, direct reports and even family members implement change.
While many books have covered organizational change, business school professors Chip and Dan Heath cover the patterns all successful change efforts have in common in Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard (2010).
The Heaths avoid looking at the history of failed changes. Instead, they share stories of spectacular changes that worked because execution is built upon prior achievements.
In researching significant social, educational, governmental, marital and organizational changes, the professors came up with a framework that anyone can apply in real-world business situations and life.
Evolve - Achieve - Process
First Steps
In many ways, the first small steps (baby steps as my friend David Emerald author of The Power Of TED* says it) you take to change your behavior are the most important. Once you initiate change, it seems to feed on itself, as two psychological triggers are at work:
1 The mere exposure effect: The more you’re exposed to something, the more you like it. Initially unwelcome change efforts will gradually be perceived more favorably as people get used to them.
2 Cognitive dissonance: Once people take small steps, it’s increasingly difficult for them to dislike how they act. We don’t like to act in one way and think in another. And once we begin to behave differently, our self-perception changes and our identity evolves, which reinforces our new approach. Leading to new exciting experiences and people that resonate with who we are evolving to become.
The Snowball Effect
Such changes aren’t the result of “small wins.” Rather, they are automatic forces that kick in as time passes. It’s essential to start as soon as possible and take advantage of the momentum. Imagine a snowball rolling down hill getting larger the further it rolls. That’s momentum. Roll with it through the change you’ve chosen to make.
While inertia and the status quo may exert an irresistible pull, at this point you need to muster the “courage” and just do it. Just get it started. Your first attempt doesn’t have to be perfect or complete. At some point, inertia will shift from resisting change to supporting it, and small changes will snowball into big changes.
Recognize up front that it’s human nature to focus on the negative. As you review the behavior you wish to change, it’s only natural to think of what’s not working. When competing for brain space, bad thoughts easily beat out good ones.
In an exhaustive study of 558 words that represent emotions, 62 percent were negative versus 38 percent positive. When we learn something bad about someone, we pay closer attention to it and remember it longer. The negative receives greater weight when we assess a person.
In another analysis, researchers examined 17 studies concerning how people explained events in their lives. Across all domains - work, politics, sports, personal - people were more likely to spontaneously bring up negative events versus positive ones.
The Problem with Problems
Focus on what’s broken, and you’ll come up with a long list of things that need to be fixed. In reality, fixing everything is unrealistic. Sometimes there’s simply no time, budget a realistic deadline for a major overhaul in business.
Some things may never be completely fixed, and you’ll choose to tollerate it or not - but this doesn’t exclude picking one key behavioral change that can vastly improve both short and long-term results effecting a possitve impact in all areas. In personal relationships, I’ve experienced change that seemed unchangeable. When a key core behavior shifts, it can create the results you want and a positive perceptual shift in those around you. It’s in our DNA to grow, expand, and evolve.
Marcus Buckingham, author of Go Find Your Strengths, urges readers to make the most of their strengths, rather than obsessing over their weaknesses. Despite our natural human tendency to focus on the negative, we can make an “effort” to override it.
Follow Your Bright Spots
Start by identifying what is working, and do more of it. Clone the behaviors that get optimum results, and aim higher to continue upping the ante.
Many people believe change is hard and must be complicated. Psychotherapy, as originally designed, involved three to five weekly sessions, during which people discussed their thoughts over several years. But people rarely made behavioral changes; they just began to understand why they behaved in certain ways.
More recently, through techniques like Solution-Focused Brief Therapy, people are defining their key strengths and values, identifying what’s working and following action plans.
By doing more of the little things that work, they create better relationships and successful behavioral changes. When you ask, “What’s working, and how can you do more of it?” you enjoy better results in less time.
Remember what we focus on tends to be what we manifest into our daily lives at work with colleagues, at play with friends, and at home with family. Make a choice now to feed the bright spots and roll with the results. We all can exercise our option to make a new choice if the results are different then what we intended.
A Quick Lesson On The Word “Don’t”
Our behaviors and outcomes are determined by the representations we imagine in our minds. When we precede statements with the word “don’t,” - for example: Don’t think of a purple elephant - our subconscious mind negates the negative “not,” in “don’t,” and creates an image of what we were not supposed to think of. How big is your purple elephant?
Often times we will have thoughts or make statements regarding what we don’t want to happen and our creative subconscious mind will then create the imagery of what we wanted to avoid, making it more likely to occur. The lesson in this example is that whatever we focus on is what we tend to manifest in life.
It’s important that all statements and affirmations be made in the positive so that our subconscious mind will direct us to accomplish what we want, helping us to realize the results that best serve what we want to feed. Working with a consultant, professional coach, or mentor can accelerate the results you want allowing you to gain momentum and thrive.
Start with the Beginning in Mind
Perhaps the famous Stephen Covey quote, “Begin with the end in mind,” needs to be revised: Start with the beginning and the end in mind.
Both are important. Without a destination to aim for, it’s harder to stay motivated and on track.
It’s important that your destination be specific and evokes emotions. Use both your rational and emotional brain when aiming for a specific result so they make sense and connect to strong desires.
10 Steps To Unleash the Snowball Effect
1 Identify which behaviors work better than others.
2 Investigate and then clone successes.
3 Start with a small change, and make it specific.
4 Give yourself direction by providing your start and finish.
5 Energize yourself by identifying the feelings of the finish.
6 Cultivate a sense of identity that reflects your new growth.
7 Change your situation; tweak your environment, as needed.
8 Build habits. When something works, repeat it.
9 Get support. Behavior is contagious, so help it spread.
10 Reward yourself and others along the way to anchor in what works.
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