A couple of months ago Seth Godin wrote a blog post title, “The one who makes things worse.” The opening line was, “Every committee or organization has at least one well-meaning person who is pushing to make things more average.”
You have this people in your agency, and in your in your training unit. They are the ones always telling you that your new ideas will never work, that management will never buy in, that cops will never buy into that. They are the people who hold onto the belief that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
These people fear change. They fear the new ideas may not be accepted. They fear the work that comes with change.
Change is scary and change is hard work. It takes work to do the research, it take work to put together a business plan, and new lesson plans and course training standards. It takes work sometimes to sell the idea to people to help them understand the benefit to them. There will always be people that bitch and complain about the “new training”. They are likely the same people bitching and complaining about the current training.
“The soft minded man always fears change. He feels security in the status quo, and he has an almost morbid fear of the new. For him, the greatest pain is the pain of a new idea.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
The last line of Seth Godin’s blog post was this, “In the service of honest communication, perhaps the one who makes things worse should acknowledge that this is what he does for a living. That way, if we want things to be a little more average, we’ll know who to ask.”
If you have those people in your unit then acknowledge who their are, what their perceived role is and move forward despite them.
If you are that person then change your attitude or get out of training. There is too much at stake to embrace the status quo and accept mediocrity.
Take care and always remember Life’s Most Powerful Question – What’s Important Now?
Brian Willis
Winning Mind Training – Inspiring Change through Excellence in Training.
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