Anyone who has ever raised an infant child will have had this experience: You spot your darling baby sitting with a big contented smile on their face. You reach out to them. Their smile gets even bigger. As you pick them up you suddenly catch the smell – whew!! Only a parent will continue – and clean them up. The kid was sitting there happy as all get out sitting in a pile of you-know-what for heaven knows how long. So much for the baby cries when their diaper’s dirty theory.
There is a lesson here. As we get older we may grow bigger, become smarter, wiser, more mature, etc. - become toilet trained - but our fundamental nature does not change. As human beings we have the ability to get comfortable anywhere: even in stinky piles.
What is comfort? It is always something familiar, something known. Classic symbols of comfort include the worn EZ chair, washed out blue jeans, old sneakers – familiar and known. Ah, the comfort zone – safe and secure. The unfamiliar and the unknown are almost always uncomfortable: new shoes, new job, and breaking old habits. Sitting in old chairs and wearing old clothes will never be viewed as detrimental. But, when the metaphor translates to other aspects of our lives we often have to rethink the concept of a safe comfort zone.
Most people would agree in conversation with the premise that change is good. However, this usually means that actual change is good for other people. Personally I have never met anyone who really wants to live in a state of constant change. In fact most people demonstrate behaviors that could be only interpreted as a fear of change. Think about it: constant strangeness, nothing’s familiar. We strive to be expert in our fields, but we cannot even be competent in what we do not know. No, the land of change is not a place for R&R. But what is continuous process improvement if not constant change?
Maybe this is why we tend to embrace and endorse change that is really more of the same – repackaged old ideas that avoid conflict at all costs – places where our competence can be comfortably demonstrated. Maybe this explains the inertia encountered when attempting to initiate new behavior patterns capable of generating radically different results. Maybe this explains why, despite decades of publicly endorsing process improvement, American healthcare organizations remain woefully deficient in so many basic categories. A prime example is patient safety, but it is only one of many – of which myriad articles may and should be written.
Am I comfortable? Am I comfortable while sitting in a malodorous pile?
There is a lesson here. As we get older we may grow bigger, become smarter, wiser, more mature, etc. - become toilet trained - but our fundamental nature does not change. As human beings we have the ability to get comfortable anywhere: even in stinky piles.
What is comfort? It is always something familiar, something known. Classic symbols of comfort include the worn EZ chair, washed out blue jeans, old sneakers – familiar and known. Ah, the comfort zone – safe and secure. The unfamiliar and the unknown are almost always uncomfortable: new shoes, new job, and breaking old habits. Sitting in old chairs and wearing old clothes will never be viewed as detrimental. But, when the metaphor translates to other aspects of our lives we often have to rethink the concept of a safe comfort zone.
Most people would agree in conversation with the premise that change is good. However, this usually means that actual change is good for other people. Personally I have never met anyone who really wants to live in a state of constant change. In fact most people demonstrate behaviors that could be only interpreted as a fear of change. Think about it: constant strangeness, nothing’s familiar. We strive to be expert in our fields, but we cannot even be competent in what we do not know. No, the land of change is not a place for R&R. But what is continuous process improvement if not constant change?
Maybe this is why we tend to embrace and endorse change that is really more of the same – repackaged old ideas that avoid conflict at all costs – places where our competence can be comfortably demonstrated. Maybe this explains the inertia encountered when attempting to initiate new behavior patterns capable of generating radically different results. Maybe this explains why, despite decades of publicly endorsing process improvement, American healthcare organizations remain woefully deficient in so many basic categories. A prime example is patient safety, but it is only one of many – of which myriad articles may and should be written.
Am I comfortable? Am I comfortable while sitting in a malodorous pile?
No comments:
Post a Comment