Sticky Mindset

A story that has been shared in India over generations talks about the challenges in mindset to adopt to change. This has some great relevance for me as I see a lot of people in my world of Agile coaching and this story resonates a lot of professionals.

 My sincere thanks to Dr Gururaj Kharjagi to share this story to the larger audience.

 A young farmer is very happy with his land and his family. He grew his crops, sells it and has a peaceful life. It so happened that year there was no rainfall. Most of the farmers were panic and started thinking of alternate plans for living. The draught continued for two more years and finally all of the farmers except this guy decided to moved out of the village for a livelihood.

The farmer refused to move out as he felt a lot of emotional attachment to the land he received from his ancestors. He decides to dig the earth and find water. He gets into a contract with a company which specialises in drilling bore wells. The contractor raises a risk that there shall be no water as there has been a famine in the last three years, yet the farmer is adamant in drilling a borewell. The borewell drilling starts and the bore is drilled for around 700 feet. They find no water. The farmer decides to go to a depth of 1000 feet.. Yet no water!! The farmer instructs the company to drill a hole to a depth of 1500 feet.. yet no water.. This continues in to 2000, 2500 and 3000 feet.. While there was no water, a thick black viscous liquid comes out. The liquid comes out with such a force that this fills the land that belongs to the farmer. The farmer gets worried and asks the workers to stop the flow of black liquid, but due to high back pressure they cannot stop the flow. The drilling job is stopped after 2 days.

One of the farmer’s friend took the black liquid to the lab and got it tested to realize that what was pulled out of the earth was crude oil. The farmer is extremely happy and starts selling the crude oil and becomes very rich in a short duration of time. He decides to hire a Harvard graduate as an assistant. A Harvard graduate is hired as an assistant with a wonderful salary package.  The first meeting with the farmer…

Farmer : “How many doors does a car have ?”

Assistant : “4 Sir ?”

Farmer : “Can you get a car with 8 doors., As I am now very rich I need a big car  ?”

Assistant : “What Sir ? 8 doors . Sir President Donald Trump has one Limosine car?”

Farmer : “Get me one ?”

A Limo car was bought and a chauffeur was hired.

The Farmer gets into the car and asks the driver to open all the windows as he is feeling very hot. The diver explains that the car is Air conditioned, while the farmer is not ready to listen to the driver.

The driver asks his assistant to cut open the top of the car as he can feel fresh air and light. The assistant pleads not to do this, yet the farmer is adamant.  He asks his assistant to get a small chair from his home which he has been using since the last few years and gets this into the  car.

He sits inside the car on his chair placed on the seats and his head popping out of the car. The car is driven not more than 4 km/hr as there are two bullocks fit to pull the car. Though the car has a power of 120 BHP, the farmer wants the car to be driven in this way as he knows only driving a bullock cart.

This is how I see how we measure metrics, success and run projects in Agile. The power of the car is unused, Assistant and driver are upset. The only happy person is the farmer. Unless Leaders change and embrace the new way of working in the right spirit, we will just move at 4 km per hour

Does this behavior resonate to some of your experiences?

Let me know your comments.