Who’s the villain in this play?
The Change Question: Who’s the villain?
You’ll never see a baddie in a movie opening up an Apple laptop to do dastardly things, nor texting their gang of thugs on an iPhone.
Apple, allegedly, has a “no villain” clause, which means you never see their tech in the hands of a Criminal Mastermind or anyone employed in their Web of Deceit.
Which is all very well for Apple.
But if you lead change, you benefit from having someone or something to go up against.
Medicine v Vitamins
It’s a truism in marketing that it’s easier to sell medicine than vitamins.
Medicine fixes something. Vitamins make something good, better. (I’m not a medical doctor, nor do I play one when writing newsletters, so I’m sure this isn’t the whole truth, but you get the point. 🩺🙂)
Medicine battles the villain of illness.
Find your villain.
And next, help people become heroes.
But that’s a topic for another Change Signal newsletter.
Pod Wisdom: The dragon’s treasure
Liane Davey, from the Change Signal episode "Your Change Team Needs More Conflict, Not Less"
"If the dragon is breathing fire, it's because they're protecting treasure. What we tend to do when the dragon breathes fire — someone is being emotional, or whatever — is protect ourselves. We start to put bricks of facts in a wall between us. “Well, this report says this and this stat says that…” This does nothing for the dragon. It just builds a wall. So instead, what you have to do is deploy another skill. You need to ask ‘open drawbridge’ questions. Learn to ask questions to get the dragon to open the drawbridge and then draw you the treasure map."
Listen to the full episode with Liane Davey now
Liane Davey is the author of The Good Fight, a Change Signal Top Shelf book.
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The Last Word
"I'm not bad. I'm just drawn that way."
~ Jessica Rabbit, Who Framed Roger Rabbit