Coming home…

Yesterday my eldest came back on a visit from university, having only left us 3 weeks ago. “Oh!” she said to my son, “You have grown! And things look different!” In that moment she was seeing the very familiar through a different lens, one that enabled her to see us a little more as a stranger would.

In a way, this summarises the essence of my work. Once you are fully familiar with how a system operates you start taking many things for granted, both those that work well and those that don’t; the strange and the mundane. It is yet another of the filtering mechanisms¹ that I have been blogging about. However, this very useful device also blinds us to some things that are obvious to an outsider. This is why I believe that it is pretty much essential to involve outsiders in the change process, because of the things they see and the questions they ask. It is really very similar to Hans Christian Andersten’s fairy story of the Emperors New Clothes.

So if you have someone new on your team, or a new friend or acquaintance, treasure them and listen to them because they bring you a great treasure of insight and challenge (and of course all of you who have children will remember this stage with delight.) Don’t dismiss these innocent words, questions and observations, use them to help you! Good luck

“I have seen three emperors in their nakedness, and the sight was not inspiring.” Otto von Bismarck

“The less people know about how sausages and laws are made, the better they’ll sleep at night” Otto von Bismarck

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1. Previous related blogs:

• Intuition – that still, small voice
• Authenticity & the Bullsh*t Filter
• Notice – what you notice!
• When two realities collide
• When two realities collide – part 2

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This entry was posted on Friday, February 8th, 2008 at 09:20 and is filed under Business Change, Personal Change. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.