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Afraid of being all alone in your change effort? Check out your “dojo” for allies!

Writer's picture: Kenneth E. FieldsKenneth E. Fields

Let’s revisit Herb Shepard‘s “Rules of Thumb for Change Agents” which have stood the test of time for 40 years. This time we’ll talk about his fourth rule:

RULE IV: Innovation requires a good idea, initiative and a few friends.

In my last post on Change Ninjas we talked about the benefit of blending in to the organization and timing your advocacy of change. However, you can’t do it alone.

I recently worked with an organization that wanted to see a significant culture change but didn’t have full time resources to dedicate to it. One person was clearly interested in being a ‘ninja’ and knew that they couldn’t do it alone…so where could they find partners?

The dojo!

The Dojo!

Just like the historic ninjas, this Change Ninja quickly formed a “dojo” of allies from several areas of the organization and the team began to sketch out the future state of the change and the steps needed to get there. When choosing ‘dojo members’, they followed Shepard’s advice:

“Like the change agent, partners must be relatively autonomous people. Persons who are authority-oriented—who need to rebel or to submit—are not reliable partners; the rebels take the wrong risks and the good soldiers don’t take any.”

If you’re trying to inspire change, find people who are like minded (regardless of where they are in the organization), get them together, and get to work!

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