Change is like skiing

First, it’s hard to learn. It requires lots of efforts until you know exactly what to do to keep your legs aligned to move straight. And when your body realizes that going straight requires aligned feet, you learn that changing your direction still requires them to align, in synchronism.

Have I ever practiced skiing? No, I haven’t, although I tried roller skate once. Either way, it isn’t hard to guess that:

Feet like | |: get you straight

Fee like \ \: move you left

Feet like / /: move you right

It means, if your feet are aligned to the same direction, your whole body will undoubtedly go on that direction. Now, what happens when your feet don’t ‘talk’ to each other and wanna take their own way?

Feet like | / or \ |: allow you to some progress, but, not towards the direction you really want – and may result in fall

Feet like / | or | \: will make you speed down or even fall depending on how fast you are

Feet like \ /: a bit of progress with no doubt your gonna fall sometime, right? Your body is not that elastic

Feet like / \: may still allow you to go straight, but, will end up stopping you – with an unforgettable fall depending on your speed

Now, think of your organization trying to resolve a problem or changing the way things you do as you always did. It is true that each team have their own needs, but, if they don’t come along, open-minded to do a bit of slalom – some sequences of \ \ and / /, with small | | – change will take much longer to be achieved (if you get it when you don’t stop / \ or fall \ /).

Don’t tell me it’s hard – I said that myself at the very beginning. I’m still exercising my body, trying to take every other part of it making the right movements that will allow (or pull) my feet to the correct position; remaining flexible enough to understand it will take a while and will require going on the others’ direction sometimes.