Daily Inspiration: “Initiative is the best medicine. Commitment is the cure!”

“Initiative is the best medicine. Commitment is the cure!” – Futurist Jim Carroll

This is a frame grab of a show I did last year – I was busy figuring out how to do innovative things in the studio, and one of my small projects had me figuring out how to place myself in small spaces. Whatever.

Back to my main point: during a conversation with a few folks about change, I found myself emphasizing a key observation in my mind: the scariest thing about taking the first step towards big change is the first step. After that, one day at a time, walking becomes a little bit easier. But while taking initiative is a great first step, it can quickly become meaningless without commitment!

Because otherwise, it’s just a failed bit of initiative.

At a personal level, I see a lot of people give up way too early – they can do the ‘initiative’ part, but they fail at ‘commitment.’

And at a corporate level, this type of failure happens all the time. A senior executive announces some sort of sweeping, bold change initiative. Everyone takes a deep breath and plunges in, full of restless anticipation as to the impact of the ‘big change.’ But over time, enthusiasm wanes, inaction bleeds in, commitment disappears. The entire initiative is ruled a failure. Here’s the thing – once this happens, the second time around, it is far more difficult to take the first big step, and the process of commitment will seem absolutely overwhelming.

That’s why the only thing that really works with change is an absolute commitment from the start.

By the way – the image? It’s a frame grab from a virtual ‘thing’ I was playing around with last year while learning things in my home virtual broadcast studio.