Small Wins and Being a Contribution

Institutional Change comes painfully and agonizingly slow. Institutions have a culture that is deeply inscribed in their everyday actions and communications. Sometimes this culture has a beneficial aspect, because culture acts as the binding aspect that holds that institution together and allows it to accomplish its vision and goals. Yet other times this culture has a detrimental affect, that while it benefits a few inside the culture, may bar the institution from continuing to thrive and accomplish what it sets out to do. Sometimes change may be the very thing an institution may need to survive, yet the culture is so deeply engrained that it will not be able to adapt.

Change does not always have to come about in large, immediate success. Many different sources talk about small victories, including Kouzes and Posner. The account of small victories that I found most compelling was Meyerson's example in Rocking the Boat, because of its incorporation of personal integrity against and in conjunction with organizations the most clearly. These small successes allow for momentum to shift from the ingrained culture to the necessary growth needed for survival and flourishing. The small succeses also allows for other people in that institution and part of that institutional culture to come on board; either as seeing small victories as a method of persusasion or through understanding the small victories as indicators that the overall change of culture will be possible.

The way to measure or recognize these small victories shouldn't be dependent upon an outside source for validation. In the very first day of class, Professor Dalton read to us from Zander and Zander's being a contribution. The Zanders suggest that instead of assessing through accomplishment, to instead look to "contribution." This is not an example of "Did I check off goals off of my list" but instead "how did what I do have meaning?" To me, contribution thinking is the first step toward small victories, because it allows for the proper perspective and positivity to recognize when small victories happened. Instead of assuming that the institution (that is resistant to change in the first place) will be the place of validation, it instead allows the person enacting the change to measure their success. While for perfectionists like myself this may seem like a difficult understanding, being a contribution allows the value for works in progress and self-reliance upon measuring and evaluating success.

What I have learned the most from this class is to trust my own self-assessment skills in how I appreciate my own ability to change institutions around me. I recognize when little things ease and this contribution, small victory outlook, allows me to celebrate when that little bit of culture is liberated and continue toward that large, necessary changes that are often needed inside an institution.