Inspiring Desire at Work

Recently, I have been thinking about desire.

Not in the world-burning sense of the Robert Frost poem (sorry, that would be a more exciting post). But in the context of dealing with or creating change at work.

Without desire for change, your whole system crumbles. I’ve seen teams overcome other challenges – knowledge gaps, even weak reinforcement – as long as there’s that desire for change.

I’ve tried a few things over the years to spark that desire with teams:

• Drilling down on the problem to confirm that people are even aware it exists, which can then prompt a desire for change

• Highlighting and educating about the benefits of a new system, which can lead to an “aha” moment for people (oh, it would be cool if we could do that)

• Pitching a vision on an end state with a better future, which can help get people to propose their own ways of how we might change to get there

That third tactic is the most successful I’ve found, but also can be the hardest and messiest. You can get a lot of resistance to a different future, even a better one. And once people are bought in on the desire to change, you are suddenly navigating conflicting opinions and even political minefields. But, you’ve overcome the apathy.

And without desire, you can’t move forward.