Getting anything started in a group does not work easily. It often tests the patience of someone trying to introduce a change for good. Getting someone out of status quo is a tough one, then there is also a group mindset that someone will change first so wait until it happens. What really works is the one who wants to introduce the change, changes and finds some followers. If there is a big bang approach of getting everyone on board at once, it will be a big disappointment. Peter Senge talks about in his book ‘The fifth discipline’ as one of the laws – ‘The harder you push, the harder the system pushes back‘
We used to screen learning videos in our cafeteria every Friday lunch time at ThoughtWorks, one of those days I happened to watch this video below which reinforced the fact that success of an initiative depends on your followers. Getting the first few followers matters and takes time; the rest will fall in place. Watch this video to find out how one guy leads an entire group to dance but not until he gets two courageous followers. Till the time he got a follower, he was a lone nut dancing.
I observe a lot of things which seems analogous to – ‘feel entitled to pick the low hanging fruits but get frustrated a lot when there is hard work involved in picking the remaining fruits’. Growing distractions & instant gratifications have begun to tune us into thinking that if we are destined to land far and high and need to just get the right thing happening. Social media is also only a window of the highlights, nobody puts their tough paths to success thus creating frustration and envy.
Our best successes often come after our greatest disappointments.
If we look at some of the ads in the newspaper and tv, especially the weight loss related ones; they play according to the weakness of the people who want to get fit and look great but don’t want to eat right, exercise right and sleep well. A lot of people fall for it, for the promise of getting a lot for doing nothing.
Of course there are few entitled individuals who have a lot due to inheritance, but that is a small number. For a majority of us who have a success story to tell, the path would have always been tough. There is no overnight success, it takes time; we should put in our due efforts.
I came across this sentence ‘Regression towards the mean’ in the book ‘The drunkard’s walk’. It means that if something bad, unusual or extraordinary happens then it mostly followed by an average acceptable one. It mentions that people are often fooled by this phenomenon, it gives a false sense of control over situations and outcomes. People think that rebuking someone for bad behaviour results in good behaviour, but according to statistics acceptable behaviour always follows bad behaviour irrespective of getting yelled at or not.
A flight instructor’s example is given, the flight instructor thinks that yelling at a pilot making a serious mistakes makes them fly the plane better next time and praising a pilot for a good flight results in a mediocre flight next time; so the instructors resort to only yelling and no praise, but studies show that irrespective of an instructor’s reaction the behaviour of the pilots always fluctuated, a good one was followed by an average one and a bad one was also followed by an average one.
This shows that we should learn to respond to situations than react to it, if there is something not acceptable it is better to express the impact on us and leave it, than to do something to make sure the person repents for the mistake. It is a tough habit to leave as rebuking and a good behaviour following is very much a positive reinforcement, but if achieved it creates a good atmosphere to allow natural fluctuations take its course without worrying too much about it.
Novi's 