When you’re thinking about change and ways to improve.

Accept, begin to identify, and illuminate parts of the beneficial changes that align with your hopes, but you need choice and a bit of randomness. 

The workplace hopes, personal hopes – typically, I specialize in the workplace pieces and working with individuals inside organizations and teams to recognize three things about change and randomness.

1. Change is continuous. 
2. You want to keep identifying what about this change is useful. What differences or indicators will you notice.
3. What choice do I have in this change? 

The three things about randomness and change are an inspiration for creating the solution-focused SOLVEDcards. 

Recently I was working with Brandon. Brandon was matched with me through an organization to do some leadership coaching.

I sat with Brandon. We talked for a while, and through our discussion, Brandon turned to me and he said, “Mike, I’m not even sure I want to work here anymore. Or what are my career choices inside this organization?” 

And so, we worked through a solution-focus coaching process.

We talked through the SOLVEDcards questions. Listening to his situation, observations, levels, validation of skill sets and developments, exceptions – when he’s noticing, he feels more secure and more certain about his choices.

And at the end, Brandon chose a decision and direction SOLVEDcard.

And interestingly, he chose this card.

This card is one of the more interesting and confusing cards, mainly because it relies heavily upon your choice in the environment. It allows some randomness or complexity into your day.

Flip a coin heads you agree to share and commit to making one change by the end of the day. Tails, you agree to do nothing different.

Brandon and I sat there for a while. Finally, he looked at me and said, “So I don’t have to do anything.”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s up to you. You choose what you want to do,” I responded. 

“Okay, Mike, I will flip a coin every morning. Tomorrow morning, Heads – I’m going to pick one thing to change. Tails – I’ll do nothing different.” 

We met the following week, and my first question to Brandon was, “What’s better?” And he looked at me, and he said, “What’s better?!”

Brandon identified four things he did. He picked small things like:

• Reach out to my manager and discuss career opportunities.
• Identify people in the organization I admire or who have moved fast in the company, invite them to lunch and ask them what they did.
• Begin searching out organizations that may be useful and effective to my hopes. Then, find LinkedIn connections at those companies and talk to those people.
• Commit to every day flipping the coin. Heads, try something different – Tails, stay the same.

As Brandon went through what he did and his ideas, he shared with me that he’s been hopeful for the first time in four years, hopes of what he wants to do.

And because now he has a small thing to do, a choice to make every day, a decision, something slightly random. And yet, he had control over getting a better understanding of his life and career choices.

How can choice and randomness help me with change? 

When you’re working with change or you’re feeling stuck, or you’re feeling unstable, or you’re in a complex environment:

1. Take a deep breath.
2. Understand where you are.
3. Identify what’s currently happening, 
4. What you want to have happen, 
5. And what an indicator of success will look like when those things are happening.
6. Introduce some randomness into your day.
7. Flip a coin. Heads, you choose to do something different. Tails, you choose to do the same thing you normally do every day. 
8. Invite and look for randomness

Take notes, write down, or talk to yourself and say

1. What’s different about today
2. What happened to amplify, do more of  
3. And what happened at want to dampen or do less of

Change is happening, and you can better navigate and seek useful pieces by introducing randomness and choice into your day. 

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