There is a sentence managers hear again and again: We cannot do this now.
There are not enough people. The budget is limited. The team is exhausted. The system is outdated. The market is difficult, or senior management still does not support the move. First, we are told, we need to get the conditions right. Then we will be able to change.
Moses seeing the Holy Land from across the Jordan River
Sometimes that argument is entirely correct. There are changes that cannot be made without money, people or infrastructure. The problem begins when we assume there are only two possible situations: one in which change is impossible, and another in which all the conditions are finally in place.
As if one morning the budget will arrive, employees will suddenly have time, resistance will disappear and we will be able to press a large button marked “change.”
Rabbi Isaac Arama, author of Akeidat Yitzhak, reads the process of repentance described in the Torah portion of Nitzavim differently. The Torah does not present a simple sequence in which the people of Israel first complete the entire process of change and only afterward see their circumstances change. Repentance and return are intertwined. A certain movement begins on the individual’s side, reality then changes, and that creates the possibility of a deeper movement.
Arama describes the beginning of the process as a “certain beginning.” When a person is at a point of weakness, he truly may not be capable of immediately carrying out the “complete act.” But that does not mean there is no point in acting.
The first step begins precisely from that incomplete position. It does not solve everything, but it changes the situation slightly. The new reality makes another action possible, and that action creates an opportunity that did not exist before.
By the end of the process, the person may be capable of doing something that genuinely was beyond his ability at the starting point.
That is an important management insight because it reverses the relationship we usually assume between capability and action. We tend to say: When I have the tools, I will act. Arama suggests that sometimes the action itself gradually creates the tools.
A manager inherits a mediocre team and assumes that only after recruiting excellent people will it be possible to build a culture of excellence. But perhaps better people will be attracted to the organization only after that culture begins to take shape.
A company says employees can be given autonomy only after trust has been established. Yet trust is often built by granting limited autonomy, examining the outcome and gradually expanding it.
An employee waits to feel confident before taking responsibility. Sometimes, however, confidence comes only after taking on a small responsibility and discovering that he or she can handle it.
There is an interesting connection here to Aristotle. In the Nicomachean Ethics, he explains that virtues are not qualities we wait to develop within ourselves before beginning to act according to them. A person becomes courageous through courageous actions and just through just actions.
Action is not merely an expression of who we have already become. It is part of how we become that person.
The same logic applies well to organizational change. We might call it spiral change, as opposed to linear change.
In the linear model, an organization defines the target, builds the entire plan, raises the necessary resources and only then begins. Spiral change starts from the assumption that not all the resources, knowledge and confidence will be available at the outset.
The purpose of the first step is not to be a smaller version of the final result. Its purpose is to alter the conditions in which the next step will be taken.
I experienced this in management as well. At a time when it was not at all clear whether Ineractive would be acquired, we faced several needs simultaneously: managing cash flow and collections properly, investing in new products such as video and strengthening the management layer.
It was easy to look at the entire list and feel that everything had to happen at once.
In practice, one of the most important steps was much more focused. We strengthened financial management and changed the way we handled money and cash flow. It did not solve every challenge immediately, but it changed our starting point.
We gained greater control, greater clarity and a better ability to make the next decisions. From there, we could move forward on products, people and additional stages.
The lesson that stayed with me is that change is not always binary. Sometimes a single action is not “the change.” It is the thing that makes the change possible.
A similar logic can be seen in the Bank of Israel’s decision this week to cut the interest rate by 0.25 percentage points to 3.25%. It was the third consecutive reduction, following cuts in May and July.
A quarter-point move does not transform the position of households and businesses overnight. But it changes the environment in which decisions are made: the cost of credit, expectations and the way market participants assess their next move.
None of this means every change should be gradual. There are moments when a sharp decision is required, and sometimes gradual postponement merely prolongs a problem.
The managerial challenge is to distinguish between a small step that is really an excuse for avoiding a larger decision and a small step that genuinely builds the capacity to make it.
That is why the most useful question is not always: How do we get from here to the destination?
Sometimes that question is simply too large and mainly produces a sense of helplessness.
A more useful management question is: What is the smallest step we can take now that will materially change the conditions under which we make the next decision?
The sages teach that God says to man: “Open for Me an opening like the eye of a needle, and I will open for you an opening like the entrance to a hall.”
Not because the small opening is enough, but because it creates a possibility that did not exist a moment earlier.
Rabbi Isaac Arama is not arguing that we should settle for partial progress. Quite the opposite. He describes a process that ultimately reaches the “complete act.”
The innovation is that we should not demand that the beginning already look like the end.
Managers often wait for the conditions that will allow them to carry out change. But those conditions do not always arrive from outside. Some of them are created through movement itself.
Real change does not always begin when we are ready. Sometimes we become ready because we agreed to begin.
A tool for managers: The next-step test
Before tackling a change that an organization has been postponing for a long time, it is worth asking four questions:
What are we really missing? Separate a genuine constraint from an explanation that has simply become a habit.
What can we do right now? Choose an action small enough to be possible, but significant enough to change the situation.
What capability is this step supposed to create? More trust, information, cash flow, experience, people or freedom to act.
What will it open up next? Define in advance what decision will become possible if the first step succeeds.
The test is not how small the first step was. The test is whether it changed the starting point for the second.