Think of a time when someone told you that you were rocking the boat. Perhaps you were intentionally trying to “rock the boat.” Were you more likely making a suggestion to improve something? To change something for the better? I’ve been noticing this phrase lately, sometimes referring to prominent people in the news. But more often I’ve seen it in readers’ replies to editorials and other blog posts.
We use the phrase frequently, easily, like Morse code: When someone tells you that you are “rocking the boat”
Double Mast Ship, Maine
it usually signals that you have done or said something that has caused a problem within a group of people who figuratively are in a boat together and presumably don’t want to end up scattered in the water! The usage refers especially to trying to change a situation that most people don’t want to change. The theme of people changing, wanting to change, wanting to be changed…isn’t there a song?…great theme for a musical, with a song called “Nicely Nicely Rocking the Boat”.
When you want to change something, how do you go about it? Rock the boat? That’s one way. The literature on making and managing change successfully is huge. The steps I offer for making positive,sustainable change probably aren’t that much different than what you’d find in the textbooks. But I have drawn some conclusions about making changes:
- Change is easy or hard depending on how committed you are to it. Positive, sustainable change is about personal changes. Think of changes you’ve made easily, compare them to ones you want to make but don’t seem to get to…how do the commitment levels compare? When someone asks when will they make a particular change, my reply often is: when you’re ready. Sometimes it takes a nudge from family, friend or coach to get ready but only you can get yourself ready. Your staff won’t be ready if they sense you’re not.
- Rocking the boat isn’t all bad. One person’s fun wave is another’s typhoon. Remember rocking the boat as a kid, and it was ok if you ended up in the water? Swamping the canoe and righting it again was a required part of earning my canoeing certificate. You need to make sure you have the right conditions and that people are prepared for change: bathing suit and equipment, know how to swim and/or life preservers, know where shore is. Just because you are prepared, and might even look forward to dunking in the water, doesn’t mean others even want to climb into the boat.
- Making sense is not the same as making meaning. A change may make sense to you but to very few others. Change requires that something be done differently; it requires action. Whatever that new action or behavior is, it requires that new meaning accompany it. Without the meaningfulness of change, people are not likely to change any behavior or habit. No matter how much sense it makes to you.
Rocking the boat can be a way to shock others with cold waters of change. To engage people deeply enough to sustain change, make sure people understand why change is needed and have personal meaning attached to it. This is what I think; feel free to declaire what you think.
Cathy
