No one creates change in a single giant, sweeping motion. Change comes from thousands of little things aligned around a similar direction. These small, simple acts build on one another, growing the underlying mission exponentially, creating change along the way.
As I drove down the street the other day, I saw a grocery store employee over a half mile away from the grocery store, pushing a blind man’s cart full of groceries back to his apartment. I don’t know if this was a one-time thing or if this happened all the time. It’s great for a lot of reasons, though.
First, it’s a great example of a teammate doing a little extra to take care of a customer. There’s no faster way to customer retention. Second, it spread some goodness into the world. That goodness gets infectious and makes others want to share it. How many people saw this single kind act and then repeated that spirit in their own way? And how many people saw those people share some goodness? It just keeps growing.
For the sake of this conversation, let’s focus on the impact of that teammate on the other grocery employees and the result. That infectious quality applies directly to the teammates that watched one of their own go out of his way to create this great service. That action makes a statement about how that employee believes his teammates should act. Then those employees may want to act the same way.
Imagine if another employee did something simple and remarkable, and then another, and then another. Suddenly, through the swarm of tiny, service-based acts an organization defines its culture. As those acts gradually define culture over time, the mission gains momentum and becomes cemented.
If you want your organization to move in a certain direction (hopefully it’s a positive, service-based one), you must first lead with a lot of simple actions.
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Photo by Pablo Heimplatz on Unsplash
