Each time I complete an international assignment in a developing country my perspectives and beliefs change a little. Change is inevitable with exposure, experience and exchange involving new cultures and extraordinary economic and social realities. As we have all witnessed, change occurs in many ways. Here are four that have recently caught my eye:
1. The Organic Growth: creating change that begins and is sustained from within – it is scrupulously homemade, created with ingredients that require no explanation, instructions or special tests. It is the least invasive and the most welcomed, comparable to a smile on a tired face.
2. The Cosmetic Cover-up: creating a layer of change that unintentionally or intentionally hides what is not changed and perhaps the cause for dragging you down. It would be comparable to painting the visible part of an iceberg pink and believing that the remaining 90% located under the water is also wearing pink.
3. The Magic Code: Same input – same output. Change will happen when the input is different. Less food - less weight; more spending - less savings; less cold - more heat; less stress – better digestion. It takes a magic code to build commitment to change the input and meaningful outputs to keep it going.
4. The Boiled Frog: According to Dr. Linda Duxbury, one of Canada's leading workplace health researchers, if a frog jumps into a pot of boiling water it will jump out. But if a frog is sitting in a pot of room-temperature water with the heat turned up gradually the frog will remain until it is too late to escape. Gradual change – good or bad – is sometimes unnoticeable to the senses – and this sometimes can be a bad thing regardless of whether you are a frog or not.
1. The Organic Growth: creating change that begins and is sustained from within – it is scrupulously homemade, created with ingredients that require no explanation, instructions or special tests. It is the least invasive and the most welcomed, comparable to a smile on a tired face.
2. The Cosmetic Cover-up: creating a layer of change that unintentionally or intentionally hides what is not changed and perhaps the cause for dragging you down. It would be comparable to painting the visible part of an iceberg pink and believing that the remaining 90% located under the water is also wearing pink.
3. The Magic Code: Same input – same output. Change will happen when the input is different. Less food - less weight; more spending - less savings; less cold - more heat; less stress – better digestion. It takes a magic code to build commitment to change the input and meaningful outputs to keep it going.
4. The Boiled Frog: According to Dr. Linda Duxbury, one of Canada's leading workplace health researchers, if a frog jumps into a pot of boiling water it will jump out. But if a frog is sitting in a pot of room-temperature water with the heat turned up gradually the frog will remain until it is too late to escape. Gradual change – good or bad – is sometimes unnoticeable to the senses – and this sometimes can be a bad thing regardless of whether you are a frog or not.
Photo: Northern Elephant Seal (Mirounga angustirostris), California Coast, March, 2008
