Are We Noticing?

It was probably 8 times that I walked in and out of my bedroom before I noticed the door was not completely open and I had been adjusting my walk to avoid the door handle.

It was then I made the change and pushed the door back to it’s wide open resting place.

This is a common human experience and I’m reminded of experiments where a chair is placed in the middle of the room and people’s behaviour adapts to walk around it, rather than move it.

In our workplaces there are similar chairs, or partially opened doors, that we aren’t noticing. Instead we’re working around it and adapting ourselves, our teams, and possibly our entire organisation.

There is an irony in that this tends to occur with relatively small changes; the large obstacles - more readily observed - become a whole change project while these smaller, everyday issues are let pass.

I think about myself with my bedroom door and it makes perfect sense. In the back and forth of my morning routine - still a little tired, under time pressure - I don’t have the bandwidth for considering an incremental change that will make life easier.

In our workplaces there are the same, if not more, pressures.

As the Tanzanian proverb so wisely reminds us,

little by little, a little becomes a lot

It’s true. Incremental, smaller changes make a big difference.

It makes me wonder, how might we

reduce the pressure,

provide the space and

focus on what could be different

so that when we encounter that chair in the middle of the room, we simply move it?

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