What impact can one person have on an organization, or even upon society itself? In America, this question often leads us to think about our national heroes, an Abraham Lincoln or a Rosa Parks, a Henry Ford or a Susan B. Anthony – one person standing courageously again the status quo of their time, pushing for new ideas and helping bring about a change for the better. These larger-than-life figures can seem a little removed for most of us, though, almost as legends that, being ordinary mortals, we can’t really emulate.
If we look a little more closely, our heroes were as ordinary as we are. Rosa Parks was just trying to ride a bus; Lincoln was just trying to keep the Union together; Ford was just trying to build a cost-effective car for the masses; and Anthony was just trying to get the vote for half of the population. Are these aims so far out of the ordinary that we might think those reaching for them are somehow different from the rest of us?
It’s true that most of us will never be in the history books, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have the potential for as much impact on our world as those history – which has a selective memory anyhow – might remember. We have a wider impact on others than we may realize, with our actions rippling through our circles of influence like multiple stones dropped into a still pond. Here’s how that can happen:
One person has an idea.
One person sees a need.
One person makes something useful.
One person builds something lasting.
One person calms the tensions of others.
One person inspires everyone to excellence.
One person teaches another.
One person helps another.
One person loves another.
One person encourages another.
One person has a dream.
One person shares that dream.
One person becomes two becomes dozens working together to bring that dream to life.
Of course, it goes the other way too. But we know that story all too well.
What if, instead, we focused on the ways one person really does impact the world – through family and friends, through work and in the neighborhood, through participation in larger communities of meaning? Our cultural focus on the heroic actions of noted individuals unfortunately often obscures just how much the actions and attitudes of every person matter to the projects our organizations undertake and to effectively addressing social problems.