What good is creativity if you struggle creating change?

A good idea will challenge people to think about things differently. This creates a fundamental issue. People don’t like to be changed. We fight against it, even if the change seems minimal.

I know someone who worked in a church. Ivy was growing on the exterior brick. During a meeting to address the business of the church, it was brought to everyone’s attention that the ivy was damaging the building and would eventually cause structural issues. It was recommended that the ivy be removed. This sounds pragmatic. Yet this suggested change created an uproar and developed into a conflict that ended with several members leaving the church, never to return.

I don’t know the details, but I assume these were reasonable, well-meaning people. They just felt the ivy represented something important about their church and they didn’t want it gone.

So, if something so trivial can create such turmoil, how do you manage to change anything of importance? In a church, a business, your family… change can be a minefield. So, it helps to have a mental model, like the venn diagram above.

In this model, the blue circle represents your worldview. The magenta circle is the worldview of another person. The knives pointing out are ideas or areas where you fail to understand each other. Where you overlap, the knives point the other way and offer a handle. This is where you have a common understanding.

The goal in creating change is to grab the handles, not the knives.

If you can meet someone in a place of common understanding, you can gently pull them closer. Eventually, you may create more overlap, turning more knives into handles… creating more understanding and change.

The beautiful thing is not just the change you create in others, but in yourself as well.