If you’re leading a change effort, you better start looking for those first two stamps to put on your team’s cards. Rather than focusing solely on what’s new and different about the change to come, make an effort to remind people what’s already been conquered.

When you set small, visible goals, and people achieve them, they start to get it into their heads that they can succeed.

“learning”—the

“strategic value.”

At the beginning of the school year, she announced a goal for her class that she knew would captivate every student: By the end of this school year, you’re going to be third graders. (Not literally, of course, but in the sense that they would be at third-grade skill levels.) That goal was tailor-made for the first-grade psyche. First graders know

Notice that Cade prods the couple for specifics: “What will you do instead?” “How could you tell the other person was really listening?” The Miracle Question doesn’t ask you to describe the miracle itself; it asks you to identify the tangible signs that the miracle happened.

If you worry about the potential for inaction on your team, or if you worry that silent resistance may slow or sabotage your change initiative, B&W goals may be the solution.

And when people exhaust their self-control, what they’re exhausting are the mental muscles needed to think creatively, to focus, to inhibit their impulses, and to persist in the face of frustration or failure. In other words, they’re exhausting precisely the mental muscles needed to make a big change.

The Fataki case study may have felt foreign to you. It probably doesn’t bear many superficial similarities to the changes you’re contemplating. But look at the underlying dynamics: You want certain people to act differently, but they are resistant to the change. So you rally the support of others who in turn could influence those you hope to sway.