Activation – translating insights into action
In this third video of the series, we explore the vital concept of activation, a key counterpart to insights in the change process.
Activation is essential for translating insights into tangible actions, both in personal and professional contexts.
While many people may be highly active in their current practices, these activities often serve to maintain their existing state rather than propel them towards a desired future. As coaches or consultants, our role is to guide clients in developing new practices that align with their future goals. The video highlights the existence of two systems: one that maintains the status quo and another that fosters change.
The first system consists of patterns and behaviors that reinforce current results, such as unhealthy lifestyle choices or chronic lateness due to systemic issues. The second system, crucial for change practitioners, involves creating new practices and priorities that envision and actualize a different future.
This dual-system approach is central to achieving meaningful and sustainable change, moving beyond the preservation of what is to the creation of what could be.
(00:05)
Hello. In this third welcome video, I want to talk about the idea of activation. Insights and activation are these two elements that we have to tie together, both for ourselves, for our clients, for our families, for our communities, if we want any change to be possible.
(00:27)
An insight alone gives us a way of perceiving something we didn’t previously perceive, a new possibility, something that we want to create, a new way to create, something that maybe we’ve been struggling to create for months or years of our life. But the insight isn’t enough. We have to be in action. We have to help our clients activate to take the necessary actions today that will move them towards the future.
(01:02)
Now, there’s a couple of points about activation that I think are really pertinent. The first is that a lot of people, in some respects, are overactivated, but they’re overactivated on the practices and the strategies that are designed to achieve the results they’re currently achieving. They’re not activated in the direction of their future. So one of our most important jobs as a coach or a co-generative consultant, somebody who is working with clients, not to tell them what to do, but to help them generate their new future; one of our most important roles is to help them form and nurture and grow the practices that are necessary to create the future they want to create.
(01:55)
So one way to think about this is that there’s two systems that are constantly at play. One system is designed to keep things the way they are, and that’s the stable state system. And what I mean by systems is the interrelated set of patterns, people, tools, behaviors that self reinforce to produce a certain set of results.
(02:18)
So to explain that in a really simple way, if somebody is struggling with their health, they may have a system whereby they are constantly bringing in unhealthy food choices. They’re not sleeping enough, they’re not exercising enough, they’re under chronic stress, not that healthy stress that helps us make progress on things that matter, but that really detrimental chronic stress. But they have a system that is reinforcing these things.
(02:47)
Another example might be people that are always late. People that are always late aren’t late because they’re choosing to be late. They’re not setting out determining ahead of time, well, at least I’m assuming most of them aren’t setting out ahead of time to decide to be late, and yet they’re always late. And it’s because their system, maybe they’re overcommitted, maybe they’re trying to fit too many things in, maybe they’re not accounting for travel time, maybe they’re not accounting for getting the kids ready because that always takes 2-5 times longer than we expect it will. Whatever their system is, it’s the system that makes them late. It’s not inherent to the identity of the person.
(03:24)
So when I talk about systems, the first system is the system that keeps them producing what they’re already producing, which is great if that’s what they’re trying to produce. And that’s where most people focus their activation. They’re repeating existing behaviors with existing tools and existing relationships with existing coworkers to produce the results they’re already getting.
(03:52)
But there’s a second system, and this is the system that as change practitioners as co-generative consultants, we need to help our clients see and understand. This is the system through which change is created. In nature, nature is constantly seeking to have a stable state within an environment, but there’s another system of play through which that environment is changing. You might think of evolution as a change system, and organizations are the same, and our families are the same, and our communities are the same.
(04:26)
There’s an existing system that keeps us doing we always do. But if we want something new, what we need to activate is the secondary system through which change becomes possible. And that system requires an entirely different set of practices. It’s an entirely different way of envisioning the future, an entirely different way of prioritizing, an entirely different way of deciding right now in this moment, what is worth doing.
(04:58)
So when I talk about activation and as you get deeper into conscious action, what you’ll start to discover is that we’re constantly talking about these two systems, the system designed to maintain what is and the system designed to change it to make a bigger future possible.