What traveling by train teaches me about Change Management

Trains have always fascinated me. One of the reasons I was looking forward to school vacations was knowing there would always be some traveling by train involved. Until I left my hometown of Oradea, in the North West of Romania, I lived on Locomotive Street, three minutes away from the train station, and the sounds of trains were part of my childhood everyday music. While growing up, I had an uncle, hearing and speaking impaired, and sometimes we used to go to the train station in my hometown, and watch the trains come and go. The horns and whistles of the locomotives were the only sounds he could still faintly perceive, and that made me look at trains as something nothing short of magic.

Whenever train is an option for my travels, I take that without hesitation. There is something about that “clickety-clack” sound that is deeply calming and comforting. Taking the Transsiberian is way up there on my bucket list, and traveling by train from Rome to Palermo is one of the first things I am going to do when lockdowns and restrictions are over.

While passing by the train station a few days ago, I started wondering whether there were any teachings for Change Management in traveling by train. With all these changes unfolding around us, I was thinking about our “destination”, and also about the train “engineers”. There is a beautiful quote by Dutch watchmaker and writer Corrie ten Boom: “When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don’t throw away the ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer.”

How you mark progress makes a big difference. One of the first things that made me fall in love with Physics was when I understood reference points, and how choosing them changed your perspective. I often think about that when I travel by train, and pay attention whether I think about the journey relative to where I am from the departure or the arrival point. The stations along the way are my “moments of change”, moments of awareness and realization as to how far I have come, how close I have arrived. I often try to pinpoint the moment when I start to think that I am closer to the destination than the start of the journey. The amount of time a train spends at certain stations catches my attention, too. And it makes me think about how we mark and celebrate progress. Recognizing success stories and lessons learned is critical for Change Management, and it goes well with this saying I picked up a short while ago: “Don’t let the train of enthusiasm run through the station so fast that people can’t get on board.”

Feeling stuck or feeling lost? Having “sampled” both situations of missing a train and taking it in the wrong direction made me think about which one is the “easiest” to fix. And the answer is a very “typical consulting” one: it depends. If I miss the train in a place I am familiar with, or where I speak the local language at least, I only perceive the pressure of time. If I take the train in the wrong direction somewhere I have never been before, and I get “loster” by the mile, that makes it a bit more complicated than just being late. Lutheran pastor and anti-Nazi dissident Dietrich Bonhoeffer said it best: “If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction.” It also depends on whether I travel for business or pleasure, and on how many other people are impacted in any way by my being late and/ or lost. These are thoughts also related to  Change Management work, and my preferred instance when they arise are during conversations regarding Communications. Some people are hesitant about communicating something very early on, when things are yet not fully clear and information might change dramatically, others are preoccupied by the speed and efficiency of the “rumor mill”. “When is the best time to start communicating?” and “What and how are we communicating?” are popular questions among “change engineers”. Every time these conversations happen, I think about traveling by train: if you sleep at the station, you might miss the train, and if you sleep on the train, you might miss the station. So which one is easier to fix: feeling stuck or feeling lost? The answer depends on the organization, overall context, nature of the project, composition of the team… It depends.

Luggage matters. Without the comfort of checked-in luggage for flights, the experience of traveling by train can be significantly impacted by the amount of luggage you bring along. I find it a tiny bit more challenging when there are train changes happening along the journey. Dragging luggage is not my favorite thing to do, and in order to avoid it as much as possible I often find myself in situations when I need to “supplement resources” along the way, revisit my wants and needs, or simply improvise. Sometimes even compromise. I am sure any random group of Change Managers need a very looooooooooong train ride to have the opportunity to enjoy discussing “project luggage” experiences.

I will hop off this week’s train of thought leaving you with the words of Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar and president of Walt Disney Animation Studios: “Driving the train doesn't set its course. The real job is laying the track.”    

Bon Change Voyage!