Left side! Strong side! What ‘Remember the Titans’ teaches us about being a change catalyst

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Our lives are filled with rituals. For me, some rituals stand out. The start of fall always reminds me of a ritual from my childhood, one especially poignant since my father passed away in early 2025. Almost every Sunday, as the leaves began to turn,   my dad and I could be found on the living room couch in my childhood home, watching the Chicago Bears play (and sometimes even win!) a game of football. Within that ritual were smaller rituals. My father's lunch — always a sandwich with thick cuts of salami and cheddar cheese, topped with mustard on a plain bialy, some pretzels and an apple cut into quarters on the side. My third-quarter, post-lunch nap that somehow always ended in time for me to catch the final minutes of the game. My father's eternal hope that this year was going to be the Bears’ year, realized only once in that glorious '85 season. 

It has been a long time since I sat with my dad and watched a Bears game all the way through, but this memory still fills me with that same warm feeling of hope he and I brought to the experience, the same hopes in the hearts of all those boys and girls in Hammond, Ind., that they may soon be able to claim the Bears as their hometown team.

Why are rituals like these so important? They help us bring some consistency to a life that is filled with change from our first breath to our last. Change is all around, within our cells, outside our bodies in the natural world. The relationship between ritual and change is as important as the relationship between yin and yang. Ritual seeks stability. Change seeks transformation. Both need to be embraced in equal measure within us and the societies we inhabit, be they at home or at work, within the city, state and country in which we reside. We need Tevya from "Fiddler on the Roof" singing "Tradition," and we need Tevya also accepting that his daughters are going to marry for love, not commerce.

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Ritual and change are often a team effort, whether on the gridiron or in Anatevka. Change expands possibilities. Ritual shores up boundaries. Football provides a myriad of examples of these two factors at play. So much has changed about the way football is played since "Papa Bear" Hallas was lil' cub Georgie. Equipment has changed. Technologies used in preparation for and during the game have changed. Styles of play and expectations for the skill sets required for that style have changed. Amid all that change, rituals continue — the coin toss, the fight song and the earned hatred of the referee when they make a call against our team. 

Even change itself has its own rituals. Early adopters emerge,. skeptics hesitate and. expectations surface as. change moves from theory to practice. These rituals are important to recognize if one wants change to be effective. For that change to be impactful, those who act as change catalysts must understand, and even embrace, these rituals. Being a successful change catalyst requires the same level of finesse required to run at full speed, twist your body to catch a pass and avoid your defender. The work of being an effective change catalyst requires strong social and emotional intelligence, the power skill we are exploring this year. 

What is a change catalyst?

Let's first break down the two parts of this term. According to the Cambridge dictionary, change is defined as, "The act of becoming different, or the result of something becoming different." According to the Encyclopedia Britannica,  a catalyst is something that accelerates a chemical reaction, which might otherwise occur much more slowly, without being consumed by that reaction. The authors of the study "Social Network Analysis for Program Implementation" define a change catalyst as those people in an organization who "help others accept and enact change, serving as catalysts for improving systems, culture and outcomes." Change catalysts take it upon themselves to interact with agents in an organization whose perspective on a particular change may be opposed to one another. Zealots and skeptics do not often sit at the same proverbial lunch table. Successful change catalysts find common cause with both cliques and help broker a consensus that both groups can comfortably embrace. 

How “Remember the Titans” demonstrates the power of change catalysts

There are few movies that better illustrate the successful impact of change catalysts than the 2000 film "Remember the Titans," loosely based on the true story of coach Herman Boone, who oversaw the racial integration of T.C. Williams High School's football team in 1960's Alexandria, Va. The movie stars Denzel Washington as coach Boone, Will Patton as coach Bill Yoast and a bevy of young stars such as Ryan Gosling, Donald Faison, Kate Bosworth, Wood Harris, Hayden Panettiere, Kip Pardue and the always memorable Ethan Suplee as they each navigate the changes happening on the team, at the school, in their town and across the country in that turbulent era.  

The change this group had to undertake was in many ways monumental, with groups that had been separated by law and custom brought together by decree. They also were mundane, with different coaching or playing styles being asked to meld together into a cohesive approach to move 100 yards toward an end zone. Whether monumental or mundane, however, change is only successful when there are change catalysts within that environment working tirelessly toward its success. 

The first change catalyst we note in the film is coach Boone himself. While the team is away from town over the summer to attend training camp before the season starts, coach Boone gets them up for a 3 a.m. run through the forest. The team traverses through streams and over hills, mud and sweat caking their t-shirts and sweatpants. They finally come to a much-welcome rest at dawn. Fog lifts and reveals a field of graves. Coach Boone tells the team, who had been fighting among themselves up to this point, where they ended their run. At a field in Gettysburg, Pa. The field in Gettysburg. 

He connects the struggles the team has exhibited in coming together with the wider struggle that the Battle at Gettysburg represented and still represents for the nation. He implores his team, in peak Denzel Washington intonation, that while they might not like one another, they need to respect one another. To do so will help them play football, not as children like they were acting, but as the young adults they were becoming. The next shot is a team united, now back in the dark of night, running plays as one unit, not the two teams they had been prior to integration. 

Another way coach Boone acts as a change catalyst comes before the run, although its fruits don’t begin to pay off until after. As this training camp brought these students away from home, they needed to bunk together in the college dorm where they were staying. Rather than letting the team members resort to their preferred preferences for roommates, coach Boone assigns members from the previously segregated teams to room with one another. White linebacker with black defensive end. Black quarterback with white offensive lineman. White quarterback with black running back.  Coach Boone demands that the players learn one new thing about their roommate, with failure to do so resulting in the dreaded four-a-day practices. For most of the players, this is a struggle at first. But as camp continues, and after that impactful run to that hallowed ground in Gettysburg, those room assignments start to pay off. Pairings emerge as change catalysts themselves, especially Louie, the offensive lineman, and Rev, the quarterback.  Two teams, struggling to find peace within this integration experience, now on the road to becoming one team, focused only on winning each down.   

The greatest change catalysts in “Remember the Titans,” however, start as the greatest enemies. Julius Campbell and Gerry Bertier were both captains on their respective teams before the integration. Gerry remains captain after the two squads are integrated. Both see one another as rivals, so willing to call out the speck of sawdust in the others' eye without noticing the plank in their own.

A final confrontation happens after a brutal three-a-day practice. Exhausted and trying to rush through finding out a new fact about each other to meet that day’s quota, each calls out the ways that they are only playing for themselves or for their former teammates. Frustrated, Gerry tells Julius his approach reflects the worst kind of attitude. Julies stuns Gerry with the truth: "Attitude reflects leadership, captain." That moment represents the nadir in their relationship, which grows with respect for each other’s talent on and off the field as the movie progresses. 

As both begin to work together to improve the team’s defense, as well as the wider team’s effort at integration, they begin to bark out “Left side! Strong side!” before the snap, as they both line up on the left side of the ball. The connection between these two leaders is witnessed by others on the team, giving the rest of the team a model and permission structure to do the hard work of becoming one fighting unit. Near the end of the film, Gerry is seriously injured in a car accident. Now deeply bonded, Julius visits Gerry in the hospital. When a nurse tells Julius only family members can enter the patient’s room, Gerry tells the nurse, “That’s my brother,” referring to Julius. That bond, and the bond the other change catalysts on the team helped to create, leads the team to an undefeated season, with Julius and Gerry both receiving the honor of being named to the "All Metro" team. 

How do I act as a change catalyst within my own organization?

In their book, "Beyond Change Management: How to Achieve Breakthrough Results Through Conscious Change Leadership," authors Dean Anderson and Linda Ackerman Anderson argue that the following are key components of change:

• Content.  Strategies, systems, technologies and work practices an organization has in place to support a change.
• People. The humans working within that organization and their behavioral response to a change.
• Process. Actions and procedures designed to help implement a change.

Whatever role you play in an organization, you have an opportunity to act as a change catalyst for every one of these components of change. First and foremost, your control over your own human behavior (assuming, of course, that you are a human) has a powerful impact on how change is perceived by those closest to you within the organization. What is your body language like when discussing the change? Are you asking questions and displaying attentiveness or checking your email on your phone, performing your best sullen teenager routine? From a content standpoint, what can you do to influence the strategies, systems, practices or technologies your team uses as it relates to change? Do you have experiences from time at a previous organization that could help support the building out of more robust change-related content?  From a process standpoint, often you can play an active role in developing procedures for change, either within your own team or across the wider enterprise. Being a change catalyst requires you to show up and act, the same way a change catalyst does in a chemical reaction.

In a 2022 episode of Forrester's "What It Means" podcast, "The Secrets to Becoming an Effective Change Catalyst," Forrester Vice President, Research Director Peter Ostrow describes the three personas most people inhabit during organizational change. He describes people  being either:

• Change leaders.  Setting vision and guiding change from a high level.
• Change managers.  Handling implementation details.
• Change catalysts. Proposing new ideas that become the basis of change.

Ostrow's colleague, Vice President, Research Director Meta Karagianni, emphasizes the ability for anyone within an organization, regardless of title, to take up the mantle as a change catalyst. 

"One of the truisms we wanted to dismantle … was that in order to drive change, you have to have the power and the authority; you have to control the teams, the budget. To a degree, that’s true. But irrespective of authority and seniority … you can instigate change in the organization," Karagianni says in the podcast. 

Sometimes the change is a big one, like devising a new method for processing change orders. Sometimes the change is a small one, like cutting meetings down to 50 minutes to allow for breaks on days of back-to-back meetings. No matter what the size of the change is, your ability to drive change is only determined by your willingness to do so. 

There is even a space in which encouraging conflict can be the actions of a change catalyst. In their 2008 Harvard Business Review article, "Using Conflict as a Catalyst for Change," authors Karen Lehman and Marty Linsky ask us to admit a truth we like to shrink back from. Change creates conflict. We can’t avoid it. But, the authors argue, by building a space for that conflict, it is possible to use those dynamics to help implement  change. Their advice is to: 

• Build a container to hold the core group together. Plan no-holds-barred off-site meetings or dedicated calendar space that keeps heated conversations from spilling out and protects the group from external matters demanding their attention.
• Leverage the power of dissident voices. Embrace the valuable ideas and perspectives of those who innovate without permission or see the change from different angles and illustrate that embrace to others in the organization.
• Let others resolve conflicts. Create structures, such as problem-solving meetings, for conflicts to be surfaced but insist that the respective teams/team members involved with the conflict determine a solution themselves and report back the outcome.
• Raise the heat to uncover hidden conflicts that need to be addressed. When change is contentious, there are often other more latent conflicts that undergird the need for change. Collect data on what those are and then make a decision regarding those latent conflicts that forces the conversation out into the open.

Tackling change through action

Every one of the kids in the real-life story that "Remember the Titans" was based on had a choice. They could do the difficult work of integrating two teams and cultures into a single fighting unit  — the mighty, mighty T.C. Williams Titans — and embrace the hard work of changing their attitudes during a time that demanded choosing sides, or they could remain in the place where they were, in their hearts and minds as much as their positions on the field, before Alexandria made the decision that brought the two teams together. 

The movie illustrates the gains those kids achieved from not only accepting change but also leading it. Their examples drove others in the community to make that decision as well. The team itself was a change catalyst for the town, as much as individual players and coaches were change catalysts for the team. The most important lesson we learn from being a change catalyst is that action is the difference between a problem and a problem solved. That your willingness to put yourself on the field of change creates the conditions for others to line up next to you, to make the left side the strong side. That line of scrimmage is calling. It's time to line up.

Adam Bazer, MPD, is senior director of thought product development at ASHE.