Change at Warp Speed (and Sometimes Not)

You know how it goes, once you start looking for something, you see it everywhere.

If you’re car shopping and partial to the colour blue, suddenly every other car on the road is blue.

Lately, that “something” for me has been 'change.'

I’ve been thinking a lot about the pace of change, and once that lens clicked into place, it started showing up everywhere: in my professional life, my personal life, and even at the dojo.

In conversations with clients, we’ve been exploring leadership, governance, and evolving expectations. The questions that I'm asking are familiar and pressing: What kind of change are you hoping to see? Who else is ready to engage in shifting thinking and behaviours? What changes are staff asking for?

At home, I’ve been rewatching Star Trek: The Next Generation. In the episode Force of Nature, the crew discovers that warp drive, the very technology that enables exploration, is damaging space itself. Even I found it impossible to imagine the Enterprise without warp drive. So many storylines depend on it: escaping danger, reaching safety, and moving fast to help others. 

That episode got me thinking about the changes I often ask leaders and teams to make when facilitating conversations about equity. It is not easy to do things differently, to question long-held beliefs, and to explore new behaviours. All of a sudden, I had a deeper appreciation for the feelings on the other side of the table.

A similar reflection on change showed up at the dojo. I’ve been invited to step up my training, to show up more and speed up my progress in order to be ready for an upcoming evaluation. While I have been practicing at a moderate pace, in order to be ready for testing, my pace and my focus needs to increase. Am I ready to change and level up?

Change moves at its own speed and follows its own rhythm. Some shifts take time as people are learning, systems are unlearning, new habits are being formed. That doesn’t mean we wait passively. We are accountable for creating conditions that accelerate progress: asking questions, modeling new behaviours, and stepping into difficult conversations.

In my work, I return to the idea that we don’t always need to go to warp speed. But we do need to pay attention, take responsibility for our impact, and keep moving forward. 

By the way, the solution on Star Trek? The Federation imposes a warp speed limit. Exploring the galaxy continues, just a little slower.

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Chanel Grenaway & Associates Inc. is committed to helping leaders, staff teams and boards align with their anti-racism and inclusion goals through continuous learning and practice change. Do you need support to start or accelerate your equity practice and outcomes? Happy to hop on a call with you to see how I might help. Let’s chat.