Welcome to another edition of leadersayswhat’s the Weekender, an ounce of thought to start your weekend on the right track. Why just an ounce? Because it’s the weekend!
If you’ve been leading others for any length of time, then you’ve been frustrated by how slow it can be to enact change. Even the best ideas need time to gestate before people are totally bought in. Comedian and former political talk show host Marc Maron discussed this in a recent interview.
I pulled myself out of the political dialogue because… I was concerned and I’m a bright guy, but bloviating or taking bits of news and saying, ‘F—k the power,’ that’s all fine, but the way s—t gets done is in rooms full of people that know they’re losing, making incremental growth for people that have nothing. That’s where it happens. It’s not some dude pounding his hands on television.
Impassioned speeches are helpful to enact change, however they are not the end of the move towards change; if anything, the speech is how you kick it off. The real growth happens gradually, through arduous efforts. It can be slow and many days you’ll feel like you went backwards, but time and work is how widespread change becomes fully engraining.
Take a page from Maron. Avoid the needless aggravation associated with “bloviating” and “pounding your hands.” Instead, get your best people in a room and start making the incremental growth needed. It may not feel like much today, but neither will doing nothing.
