Quotes About Challenge

It is difficult to express the reality of Ibo society in classical English.

She pouted her lips like a gun in my face.

one way to motivate a switch is to shrink the change, which makes people feel "big" relative to the challenge.

Beware the soul-sucking force of reasonableness

If you want to be part of a group that bonds like cement, take on a really demanding task that's deeply meaningful. All of you will remember it for the rest of your lives.

When Blakely and her brother were growing up, her father would ask them a question every week at the dinner table: "What did you guys fail at this week?" "If we had nothing to tell him, he'd be disappointed," Blakely said. "The logic seems counterintuitive, but it worked beautifully. He knew that many people become paralyzed by the fear of failure.

Big problems are rarely solved with commensurately big solutions.

Culture change is difficult and slow. To have any chance to succeed, the meeting needed to deliver a jolt.

Make the change small enough that they can't help but score a victory.

Any new quest, even one that is ultimately successful, is going to involve failure.

if people are facing a daunting task, and their instinct is to avoid it, you've got to break down the task. Shrink the change. Make the change small enough that they can't help but score a victory.

What looks like a person problem is often a situation problem.

Everything can look like a failure in the middle." A similar sentiment is expressed by marriage therapist Michele Weiner-Davis, who says that "real change, the kind that sticks, is often three steps forward and two steps back." If failure is a necessary part of change, then the way people understand failure is critical.

when you seek out situations where you might fail, failure loses some of its menace. You've been inoculated against it.

How can you create a habit that supports the change you're trying to make? There are only two things to think about: (1) The habit needs to advance the mission, as did Pagonis's stand-up meetings. (2) The habit needs to be relatively easy to embrace. If it's too hard, then it creates its own independent change problem. For

motivation comes from feeling—knowledge isn't enough to motivate change. But motivation also comes from confidence. The Elephant has to believe that it's capable of conquering the change. And there are two routes to building people's confidence so that they feel "big" relative to their challenge. You can shrink the change or grow your people (or, preferably, both).

Both women experienced moments of self-insight sparked by "stretching." To stretch is to place ourselves in situations that expose us to the risk of failure.

Frey's challenge to walk the grounds already added a sense of play to the moment. What if he had also given them a "character" to role-play during their observations?

Rescue—if people are facing a daunting task, and their instinct is to avoid it, you've got to break down the task. Shrink the change. Make the change small enough that they can't help but score a victory. Once

the first surprise about change: What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem.

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You need to create the expectation of failure—not the failure of the mission itself, but failure en route. This

What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem. And no matter what your role is, you've got some control over the situation.

Big problem, small solution.