Why Communication Matters Pt. 2 Inertia

I ran into a vendor that worked on a project at a company I previously worked at.? This vendor was not my first choice, in fact, we were using their product and having worked at many facilities over the last three decades, I knew there were better alternatives, as did others in our department.

This reminds me of my favorite word “inertia”, in physics we know this as the tendency of an object in motion to stay in motion until acted upon by an outside force.? The reason I like this word so much is because it applies to everything, not just physical objects, you can even apply it to emotions, your sad inertia will remain sad until it encounters happy inertia that is greater!? I challenge you to come up with something that could not be defined in terms of inertia.

When it came to this particular product, our company’s inertia was tremendous, seemingly insurmountable, however, in my experience, physics applies.? Archimedes once said, “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world”.? This quote is a fantastic way to describe how given the right tools, nothing is impossible.? Most problems we encounter are nowhere near as challenging as moving the world, and yet we act as if they are.

My favorite quote is “A problem well stated, is a problem half solved”, by Charles Kettering.? If you use this quote properly, it will help you to define the size of the lever and fulcrum needed to overcome the inertia of any problem, and thus reveal the solution.

Let us consider an example of inertia.? Have you ever walked down a narrow path and encountered an object, let us say a chair, in the way.? The chair seems completely out of place, but because it is easy enough to walk around it, everybody does.? The chair’s inertia is seemingly greater than the inertia of those people walking around it, but is it??

Why do people choose to walk around the chair rather than move it?? Maybe they are distracted by their thoughts.? Maybe it’s easy enough to walk around it so why move it.? Now imagine a line of people walking down this path, each of them walking around it, again, very easy to walk around it, so each person does, while the line gets longer.? Every person is consumed by their own thoughts and oblivious to the environment or people around them, and the line gets longer.? All it would take is one person to move the chair and the flow of traffic would commence swiftly and quickly, dissipating the ever-growing line of people.

I give this example to demonstrate that the chair, or any perceived obstacle, has very little inertia to resist change.? The inertia of a person who is aware of their environment, the people around them and are aligned with a common goal will always have greater inertia.

Back to this vendor, they found a way around my department to get the project, despite our protest.? When the project rolled out, it had many problems, many problems that were easily predicted and in fact were communicated by my department.? Problems that could have been avoided with another vendor.? Unfortunately, it is difficult to influence a decision maker when they refuse to listen, and while it is extremely frustrating, in this instance, we could not resist their inertia, not because we couldn’t define the problem, but because they didn’t understand the consequences of their solution.

This is why it is extremely important to communicate with each other.? Had the different departments been able to communicate with each other, we could have collaborated, defined the problem and arrived at a better solution.? Had the decision maker encouraged communication and collaboration, a better solution would have been discovered.? All the decision makers had to do was trust that we had the bigger picture in mind, not just what was best for our department, but what was best for the organization.

Why Communication Matters Pt. 3 Trust