I just watched Episode 9, Season 1 of Better Call Saul. Yes, I’m a big fan of Breaking Bad. If you are yet to watch Better Call Saul and would rather not be spoiled, stop reading. It’s ok to skip a post or two of mine. If you’re still reading, don’t tell me I didn’t warn ya.
This episode has a big reveal. Jimmy McGill’s big brother Chuck turns out to be the villain behind his continually unsuccessful attempts to be an accomplished lawyer. I will save you all the details of how Chuck stabbed Jimmy in the back. The important thing is, what’s Chuck’s motivation? The motivation is that Chuck does not believe that his brother has changed from a con artist to a legitimate lawyer.
In my first week at business school, as an orientation activity, I had to climb up a 15 foot pole (the pole had climber spikes of course), stand on it (the diameter being way smaller than the length of my feet), and jump out to catch a trapeze. The whole time I was hooked with a safety cable, because breaking your legs during orientation is certainly a bad omen, right? So rationally I had nothing to fear of. That’s what I thought. And everything went well, scaling the pole was like eating breakfast.
Until I got on top. My hear rate at least tripled. My lower back had trouble straightening out to get me standing up straight. My legs shook uncontrollably. I took a deep breath. I took another deep breath. Nothing changed. I had to turn 180 degrees to face the trapeze, and I did this inch by inch in what felt like forever. This was happening while 30 of my classmates were following my movement and cheering for me from the ground. I couldn’t hear their cheers because my brain, my heart, all my 5 or 6 senses were united around the sole mission of keeping me alive.
I don’t think it takes much to convince any of us that change is important. But not only is change difficult because of psychological reasons and because of societal reasons, but it also takes time. Usually, a long time. How long did it take you to learn to brush your teeth daily? To floss daily? What, you don’t floss daily???
I’ve had friends telling me that people don’t really change. I, for one, believe that people do change. There’s a concept we learn in business school called “change management”. Most M&A deals do not achieve the desired outcome because the leadership fails to make the adequate level of change happen. And I sure hope that if I am ever in charge of change management I can make it happen.
So I’ve been thinking about what the key thing that decides whether people change or not. Recently one thing I read online presented this idea to me. In order to change, people have to believe in change. They need to believe that change can happen.
As I reflect on my experience at Anderson, with my peers and my leadership coach, I noticed that those friends of mine who didn’t think people changed, unsurprisingly didn’t really change; they came out of business school thinking the same way they did coming into business school. The other friends who had set out clear goals for a new career direction and a more complete leadership toolkit finished their 2 years in their desired career and as a more complete leader – their diligent work paid off.
My lesson from this is two-fold. For myself, if I want to improve, I have to genuinely believe that I can, or it would be way too tempting to give up. For people I interact with, if I want a team, a group, or an organization to change for the better, I’ll have to make them believe that change is possible.
It can be incredibly difficult to genuinely believe in change. In Better Call Saul, Chuck did not believe it was possible for Jimmy to change despite the latter’s genuine efforts. Worse yet, Chuck did not tell his brother that, instead sabotaging all his efforts to become a successful, legitimate lawyer. Chuck’s failure to believe, and Jimmy’s failure to instill belief, led to the downfall of both characters.
Anyone remember “Yes We Can”?
-Richard
Richard Anderson 