Can individuals create change?

Give me a place to stand and I shall move the earth!

Even archimedes needed help – needed a place to stand if he were to move the earth. So am I too idealistic is believing that one individual alone can initiate and create sustainable change.

I shall find a place and a time and I shall change the world.

Don Berwick – President and CEO, Insitiute for Healthcare Improvement and Professor Harvard School of Public Health asnwers the question – How can I speak up when hospital culture is so hierarchical?

http://www.ihi.org/IHI/Programs/IHIOpenSchool/AskTheExpertNov142008Berwick.htm

In another forum Dr. Beriwick has stated “To ask individuals to make change is a bankrupt idea”. Maybe if you ‘ask’ someone else to make change, it is a bankrupt idea. But what if the individual himself/herself is desirious of making the change and is self-driven, do you still think it is not possible. What happened to the age old adage ‘Where there is a will there is a way’.

I believe that in every system there are individuals who are crying out for improvement and change, scattered idealists craving for an outlet. But they all face obstacles – most do not get the outlet they seek, some do not have the resources to pursue their vision. Some lack the training or education to form a clear practical vision. Whatever be the reason these people do not find the place from where they can stand and move the world. And perhaps here Dr. Berwick is right in his assessment of the inability of individuals to create change.

But this is our greatest loss, all this idealism and human desire for change is being supressed and lost. I don’t know how, but it is our responsibility that we do  not supress idealism wherever we may chance upon it – be it in a colleague, in a child, in a student or in ourselves. Yes, there are barriers and obstacles, but sometimes all one needs is someone who believes in them. When I want to do something and then I see that Dr. Berwick thinks it won’t work, I genuinely think that it might not work. But if Dr. Berwick had said that it is individuals who are the cornerstone of change then perhaps I would not have lost faith.

Your faith in someone may indeed help them change the world someday. Let idealism live, let it breathe and let it shine forth in all its brilliance.