Transformational Power of Action

Join the discussion on LinkedIn!

‘It is easier to act yourself into a new way of thinking, than to think yourself into a new way of acting’.

I get two things from this quote
- the transformational power of action
- the challenges and intrigues of attribution of ideas

We used this quote as one of the founding principles of RedQuadrant. We want to make real change in public services, and in consulting — that means more work alongside our clients, changing the work as it happens, shifting to new ways of acting.

It’s hard to do — because #management assume consultants work differently — and even harder to find a source for the quote!
___
My co-founder Dennis Vergne got the quote from his Masters studies. We know for sure that Jerry Sternin used it in The Power of Positive Deviance, but since the source was unclear, we’ve cited it in various ways.

I got excited on my holidays, when I picked up ‘In Search of Excellence’ from a Greek hotel library, and found on p73 of ‘In Search of Excellence’ — talk about a hoary old management tome! — this quote:
‘You more likely act yourself into feeling than feel yourself into action,’ attributed to Jerome S. Bruner in the book ‘On Knowing: Essays for the Left Hand (1973)’ (A developmental psychologist I like).

Could the source really have been the most mainstream of business tomes?

Well, it turns out the recorded history of the quote is much older than that, in fact it’s coming up to the centenary! In 1930 a religious meeting was reporting where either John S. White or F. J. Finch was reported in a local paper as saying ‘it is easier to act yourself into right thinking than to think yourself into right acting’. There are hints of it in Kurt Lewin, William James, and no doubt further back also.

And over time, religion (and Alcoholics Anonymous) has been a major field in which people have spoken in that way (it’s also a major source of variants of action learning and of small group practice — not coincidentally). And, of course, business — and lean and agile in particular. And in ‘fake it till you make it’ self-help.
___
Does it matter where the actual quote comes from? It has transformative power, in changing one’s own behaviour, organisations, relationships, and has some deep psychological insight.

I think it does matter — it comes from people’s effort to transform their own lives, to get out of habits, to enable #innovation and #creativity — in the pursuit of a norm or ideal they aspire to, following a tangential principle of acting ‘as if’ and creating a new context, new motivations, new incentives.
__
How do you apply this principle in your personal or organisational life? What actions have led to significant changes in your thinking?”