#19: Making Lasting Change
As a student, I find myself constantly digging for answers and seeking new information, operating with.. well... student-mindedness! This piece from Pip has me more deeply consider that when I pair my personal passions with a keen open and eagerness to search for truths through different kinds of research and knowledge, I may be more likely to create the changes I want to see last.
- Amanda
MAKING LASTING CHANGE
Pip Coburn pcoburn@coburnventures.com
Making Lasting Change
Perhaps a function of “Intention” x “Exertion” x “Know How”
About 22 months ago, I started playing with a “formula” to organize “making lasting change”.
One day I asked our brand new Fellow Amanda:
“What conditions are required to make lasting change?” and she set off for eight weeks thinking and writing and having fun with the topic. (attached)
Why did I ask her to do this? Well… from our lens of being zealous students of “change” we observe many people who have great INTENTION and EXERTION to “make lasting change” who haven’t studied patterns of change which would increase their odds of success…
…some type of “Know How” which would increase efficacy…
My Marathon Suffering and Cessation of Suffering:
Ten years ago, I met with my dear friend Steve Salopek two days after my devastatingly painful Cape Cod Marathon. It was probably my eight marathon. I didn’t realize I had no clue what I was doing!
Steve asked my strategy.
After I told him my self-generated “strategy” he said later that he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I had intention. I had loads of exertion. I had ZERO “Know How”.
I asked how many marathons he had run. “58”.
I then immediately asked him if he would be my coach. “Yes”.
The next marathon was devoid of excruciating pain and I ran it ten minutes faster.
If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, maybe a life of good intention plus exertion without “Know How” is the fate of Sisyphus.
He pushed that rock up the hill ceaselessly but I wonder if he ever searched “pushing rock uphill” on You Tube to gather outside “Know How” that could complement his intention and exertion so he could fulfill his mission! I doubt it.
Intention and Exertion without Know How reminds me not only of Sisyphus but also of a fish desperately flapping to get out of the boat bottom and somehow back into the water.
Today “Know How” is at our finger tips:
On YouTube alone we can access “Know How” on seemingly infinite pursuits from how to fold a sheet “properly”, how to create engaging soccer drills, how to make an awesome split pea soup.
MAKING LASTING CHANGE: f (INTENTION x EXERTION x KNOW-HOW)
In terms of seeking and accepting know how…
I am not sure what got in Sisyphus’ way other than being a fictional character in mythology with his fate written for a wider purpose I suppose but if I can help it I don’t want to be him!
Unwittingly, about 20 years ago I started to orient myself to more and more come from an enthusiastic/joyous space of “I really have no idea what I am doing” even if sometimes I secretly still harbored the bizarre notion that I really did.
Two things have happened.
First… I have realized that I reallllllly indeed have no idea what I am doing most of the time. The initial orientation that I “took on” has turned into my accepted reality!
Second… I am stunningly extremely enthusiastic and joyous about how little I know for some reason itself that I – perhaps fittingly – don’t know!
…Pip
More than anything I suspect I am driven by “community”. Across the past 15 years, I have grown to realize that most any success or fortune I have had in the work I do I have re-invested back into my activities such that I spend more and more of my life with people I adore and admire and just loving being around and working on a whole bunch of things that I am incredibly excited about. I like to study monumental change at the levels of society, marketplaces, organizations and most significantly… people. I like to study culture deeply. I like to attempt to create culture. I like processes and helping others advances their processes and being trusted deeply. My wife Kelly is both supportive and probably confused by what I do for a living which makes two of us. My greatest joy in my work is when I have the chance to draw from two decades of intense work in order to perhaps help someone have a break through.