When managing change it is easy to get overwhelmed. Often, this is when heretic leaders start second guessing themselves.
Change will have moments when it feels impossible. Every leader feels overwhelmed when they consider the magnitude of their assignments and responsibility.
John Maxwell rightly says, “Everything rises and falls on leadership”. This reality makes many leaders uncomfortable and freezes them. Fact: everything seems to hang on leadership. There are just some things you cannot separate from leading.

long-lived change is a journey; a step at a time allows you to create structures that will sustain the change
|| image credit: Oxfam East Africa | cc
What is it that heretics should do when they feel overwhelmed? What should they do when it feels like their cause is too big a responsibility to bear?
Simple: they break it down. The Chinese proverb, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step”. Leaders who think a ten thousand-step journey needs to be taken in one huge leap are likely to break under the pressure.
The Chinese proverb is incomplete. It should be, “A journey of a thousand miles begins and will be completed one step at a time”.
Significant change can only be accomplished through great patience. Great change needs great patience. It needs great endurance. It may mean enduring critics.
Great wins are not a result of giant steps but constant and impassioned steps. Many small wins eventually build into one great win. The reason many leaders give up on bringing about change is because they don’t see instant change.
Small change is not your enemy. One of the benefits of small wins and seeming slow progress is that they are manageable. They also allow you to develop structure to support the change you’re bringing about.
The most long-lived changed is incremental
Change that doesn’t produce long-lasting fruit is rapid change. Rapid change tends to implode as it creates little space to build structures to sustain it in the long run.
Does your work seem too hard? Is it too great to bear? Stop trying to take a ten thousand feet leap and focus on taking just the next step. Be bold. Be /ˈherətik/.