Stuck in a rut?
No?
Even worse, perhaps you are stuck in a rut but don’t yet realise it.
“Habitualization devours work, clothes, furniture, one’s wife, and the fear of war”. So said Victor Shklovsky in his 1917 essay ‘Art as Technique’.
Shklovsky uses the example of holding a pen for the first time in comparison to the 10,000th time. We don’t consciously think about holding the pen. That makes sense. It would drive us bonkers thinking about the act of holding a pen on top of expressing our thoughts in writing.
But this becomes a habit of passive thinking and action.
In our work lives sometimes things become so ingrained that we no longer see them. Our organisational culture (‘the way we do things around here’) is built on solving yesterday’s problems. Not tomorrow’s.
‘We’ve always done it that way’ is often a stock answer to questions. But, have we always faced the same opportunities and threats? Have we always had the today’s access to data, methodology and thinking?
Sometimes we need to be jolted out of this blind (perhaps bland) spot.
A consultant can act as a change catalyst bringing with him/her a fresh pair of eyes.
New employees can also use their newness to challenge the status quo and ‘blame’ asking obvious questions on their ‘intelligent naivety”.
Or, we can just ask: ‘why?’ Why do we do it that way? Why not that way?
Shklovsky’s remedy was defamiliarization. Making the familiar unfamiliar. Not to confuse us further but to challenge us to see again.
These are short thoughts. For longer, more fully-formed thoughts covering business, public relations and change visit www.sabguthrie.info or sign up to email updates.
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