This month’s phrase comes from Helen Votier from Norfolk and Norwich Hospitals. She is learning to surf and explained that the phrase is used to encourage people to try things out, to overcome the fear factor. If you are not falling off and hurting yourself, you are not pushing yourself hard enough!
It was perfect for the moment in the workshop we were taking part in. The debate was about applying a new approach to something small or to go for a much bigger ambition from the outset. Her comment swung the debate. Big won the day.
The key though is about big ambition not big change. Often starting with something small is the best way to get anything changed as we tend to get bogged down in lengthy strategy and business plans for those big changes. A big change is, in reality, an aggregation of lots of little ones. Or as the British Cycling Team demonstrated, focus on the marginal gains can lead to big improvements.
The other sentiment in the phrase relates to last month’s Idea of the Month: “Never make a mistake”. A prerequisite for any change is recognising not everything will work and this should not be seen as failure, but learning.
As the surfers would say – you’ll only get better by falling off.
