It's Time Out for Rehearsing the Problem
There's a lot of conversation right now about change. About the change people want to see. About whether things can change at all. And in the middle of all that talk, we've gotten really, really good at one thing: naming the problem.
Individually. Organizationally. As a society. We can describe what's broken in vivid detail. We can rehearse the state we don't want to be in until we've got it memorized. Naming the problem feels like progress. Often, it isn't.
What Case Western Taught Me About Change
Years ago I had the chance to go to Case Western for training on how to coach people through real change. What I learned there reshaped how I think about this work: change doesn't start with what we don't like. Naming the problem is what brings us to awareness, and that matters. But awareness isn't the same as motion.
If you actually want to move, toward better communication, toward how you handle selection and promotion, toward how you manage and develop people, it has to start somewhere else. It starts with the ideal. Not what's broken. Not what's missing. Not who's to blame. The ideal state. The ideal self. The ideal picture of what this could look like.
Ideal, Then Real
Once you have the ideal, you go looking for the real, an honest read of where you actually are. Ideal, then real. In that order.
Most efforts skip straight to the real, to the problem, to the gap as it currently feels. And that's exactly why so many of them stall. You can't sustain change on fear and frustration. Those emotions get you moving for a minute, then they run out. But when you start with what you actually want, you've got something to walk toward, not just away from. That's motivation you can sustain.
The Gap Is the Work
So here's the question worth sitting with: what's the thing about Somebodiness and culture in your organization that you know needs to change, but you keep rehearsing the problem instead of naming the ideal?
Once you name it, the real work isn't blame or shame. It's an honest conversation about the space between what you want and where you are. You ask the questions that close that gap. That's where momentum actually comes from, not from getting the problem right, but from getting the picture right and then closing the distance to it.
Try This
Before your next team conversation about "what's wrong," try asking a different question first: if this were working exactly the way we wanted it to, what would that look like? Write that answer down before anyone's allowed to talk about what's broken. Then, and only then, go looking for the gap.
It's time out for rehearsing the problem. It's time to build the picture of the ideal state and drive forward from there.