Change begins at home!

Payal Mehta
Jul 27, 2017 · 5 min read

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself”.

How many of us here crib when things don’t go your way, or the perfect way? <<show of hands please>> Most of us? Right!

And how many of us here are ready to go the extra mile to bring about the change?

Few of us?? or maybe none of us.

I am now going to tell you all a short story about something i witness every day. The boy next door gets up, dresses up hastily since he is already late for office, and when he is just about to leave for office, he notices a pile of garbage which he is supposed to be throwing in the bin. Since he is already late, he throws the garbage carelessly on the floor and walks along. Throughout the day, several people walk by, adding to the pile of garbage. Nobody bothers to pick it up. When the boy returns in the evening, he is frustrated to see an even bigger pile of garbage right on the floor. He blames the BMC for not keeping the city clean, the nation, the people. But does not pick it up. And goes his way. This is exactly what is going wrong with us.

Let me now take you all through a not so path-breaking but indeed an eye opening revelation i had, some days ago.

In life, it is usually not the bigger incidents but the minute ones that make you turn your thinking cap on. Last week i was posed with this problem by one of the directors. We had had a conversation about something he wanted my help with.

What i understood or practially deduced from that conversation was that he needed some assistance, in identifying the things that were going wrong in the organisation, in particular on the floor, among the people, during releases. He was sure there was something wrong.

My first and only task was to identify what were the PAIN areas that were actually blocking a smooth release. For the next 3 weeks, I sincerely approachedeveryone on the floor, took a survey what was going wrong and could be improved in the respective teams, and came back with the problems. Mind you! with the problems and not the solutions!! A week ago, I met him again. And proudly showcased my research to him.

Problem 1 on my list was there was no proper structure in place to track the stories written by the design team to define the requirements once they were assigned to the other teams to work upon. A story did not have any sub tasks logged in, to identify which part of the Software development life cycle it was now in, namely build, test, what? And hence it became difficult to identify them during releases.

He looked at me and asked “Aren’t you part of the design team? you could easily solve the first problem?”

I walked out of his cabin with mixed thoughts. He was right. They were my stories…i should have tracked them till closure. I went to my team and spoke about it…I told them that we must be taking ownership of the task we have started. But no, no one was convinced. They were all taken aback. Why start owning something we have never done before?

Everyone wanted a proper structure in place, but no one wanted to be the architect for it. Neither did I.

That is when it hit me, we all were suffering from a very serious disorder called the “bystander syndrome”. The chronic habit of being a bystander to all problems.

The symptoms mainly include:

1. aggressive behaviour.

2. not willing to take ownership, especially when there are other people involved too.

3. saying not my responsibility when confronted.

I myself had got diagnosed with this disease. But i wanted to become better…i wanted to recover.

I tried everything, went to several doctors and asked them to own the user stories…but everyone turned me down. I asked them to teach me the art of ownership It was like everyone had been suffering from the same disorder. Some kind of epidemic had broken out. And no one knew the root cause of it. No one had the RCA! No one was willing to take ownership.

I googled and googled about the cure of this disease. Not even google could help me this time.

This is when i lost it. I decided to fight it. I opened up my laptop…typed in the link..and when i saw there were 500 odd stories waiting to be tracked by me, i was piqued. In all my anger, I grabbed the harmless mouse beside my laptop and threw it in rage. The disorder was getting better of me. It took me half a month to recover from the syndrome, and start taking responsibility. Had i done this before, while creating the stories — it wouldn’t have taken this long. This is when i realised not all PAIN areas that i listed that day were PAINFUL…they were just some blockers, and not physical ones — but mental ones, which became more aggravated over time. I had found a remedy. The bystander syndrome was a mindset, and not a real thing. And the antidote was simple. Change yourself and the world changes along.

Like charity, Change begins at home and it begins with you in the family. And that was the cure to the bystander syndrome. The chronic habit of not taking ownership could be solved if one was ready to bring the change.

Unless you take the broom in your hand and start sweeping, you cannot expect the place to clean itself , you cannot change it.

Had the boy back then dropped the garbage in the bin, instead on the floor, he wouldn’t have been greeted by an even bigger pile at the end of the day .This is just a small example. Trust me, when you start taking responsibility for your actions, when you start bringing about the change, the world truly changes.

When you start pushing the problems by solving them, many will join hands.

This isn’t a one human army, its all about the start.

The first step is usually the most difficult one.

And as Gandhi rightly quoted: “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”

So next time, when you see yourself falling victim to the bystander’s syndrome, when you see filth in the society, cribbing does not help! clean it up. And I am sure, you wont be alone! ;)

Payal Mehta

Written by

If you think i can’t do it; don’t interrupt me while I am doing it!

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