Achieved Strategies

The world lost a great leader – Jaime Escalante. If you don’t know who Jaime Escalante is, I encourage you to watch the movie Stand and Deliver. He was a teacher.  He changed lives of inner city students by believing that they could excel in calculus, in math. His contribution: creating an environment for students to believe in themselves and accomplish success when so many had given up on them.

I learned about Mr. Escalante’s death while listening to a NPR story.  I was reminded of his visionary acts.  He was a change leader.  Determined to write a blog post about his accomplishments, I poured through blogs and articles about him.  Inspired by Mr. Escalante’s contribution, I created this list of change leader acts.

We all can learn from Jaime Escalante.

• Ganas – Means motivation to act and Mr. Escalante’s motto.  He was compelled to find what motivated his students to perform. For change leaders this is obvious when you want to inspire someone to move beyond the comfort of familiarity.

I’m interested, however, in what compelled Mr. Escalante to inspire his students.  He had an undeniable belief that people can and want to be a contribution in this world; that they want to make a difference.  A change leader never allows distractions from others or from the system to lose sight of this belief in people.

• Uncompromising standards – Mr. Escalante pushed for higher-level expectations from students who had been written off as hopeless by other teachers.  He was laughed at and discouraged from teaching calculus to inner city school kids.  Jaime Escalante’s actions teach us that to bring change we cannot lose sight of our purpose.

For change leaders this means holding to a high standard of quality, doing what is right no matter the time-sacrifice made, and spending time with employees to get their world. These are standards that cannot be compromised no matter the level of resistance. Hold strong.

• Believe in what’s possible – Despite pushback from colleagues and peers, Mr. Escalante did not lose sight of his purpose.  He knew it was possible to find the right mixture of actions to motivate each student to learn calculus.

Leading change requires that we balance our attention on what needs changing and believing in co-creating solutions with employees.  You cannot give in to the chatter of non-believers in what you want to create. Your belief in what’s possible will be a source of comfort when you have those days when the resistance to what you’re doing is mighty.

Leading change requires that we balance our attention on what needs changing and believing in co-creating solutions with employees.  You cannot give in to the chatter of non-believers in what you want to create. Your belief in what’s possible will be a source of comfort when you have those days when the resistance to what you’re doing is mighty.