The sixth building block that you can use to inspire yourself and others to take action in this time of change is to define the first steps and show that they are achievable.
This might sound straightforward but it can vary enormously, as two examples will show.
The first example comes from President John F Kennedy when he announced his intention to put an astronaut on the Moon. To win support for his proposal, Kennedy didn’t lay out every detailed action that would be needed. Instead, he defined the high-level resources that would be assigned in order to take the first steps:
“During the next five years the National Aeronautics and Space Administration expects to double the number of scientists and engineers in this area; to increase its outlays for salaries and expenses to $60 million a year; to invest some $200 million in plant and laboratory facilities; and to direct or contract for new space efforts over $1 billion from this Center in this City.”
At the time, this was the most that anybody could know. And it was enough to get people to support him so that the project could begin.
The second example comes from 1944. In May of that year, the outcome of World War II depended on the ability of General George Patton to motivate the inexperienced Third Army to follow up on the largest seaborne invasion of all time. And to do that, he needed to inspire large numbers of young people to do something highly dangerous and unpredictable that they had never done before. The way he did so is now taught as one of the greatest leadership speeches ever.
As you can read here, Patton’s approach consisted almost entirely of defining the first steps and showing they were achievable. He did this on three levels:
- First, he reminded his team of the general behaviours he expected, such as “constant alertness” and “instant obedience.”
- Then he described specific examples of the kinds of actions his people would be called upon to perform and he reminded them that other people had done these things before them: “You should have seen the trucks on the road to Gabès. Those drivers were magnificent. All day and all night they crawled along those son-of-a-bitch roads, never stopping, never deviating from their course with shells bursting all around them.”
- And third, he told his people was how he wanted them to behave emotionally: “An army is a team. It lives, eats, sleeps, and fights as a team. This individual hero stuff is bullshit.”
The language Patton used might not be appropriate for your audience but it was entirely appropriate for his. Historians have called it one of the greatest motivational speeches of all time.
And although you and I will probably never be called upon to achieve a task as great as his, we can all learn from his example.
This sixth building block of creating inspiration gives people the confidence to take the first steps. And until that first step happens, nothing changes.
But when it does, then you and the people around you take another step towards becoming antifragile.
Are you trying to convince someone (perhaps yourself) to take an action? Would defining the first steps and showing that they are achievable help convince that person to move to action?
Adapted from The Churning, Inner Leadership: a framework and a set of tools for building inspiration in times of change.
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Photo By NASA on The Commons via StockPholio.net