Telling Stories...Chapter two

[Doug Shaw]

Hi folks. Thanks for the feedback I got on the blog post about stories. I took a couple of days off to relax and a re-org gets announced! In that context, here is an interesting story from a good friend of mine, Angela Fraser. I'm tempted to ping this round to some of our senior managers...what do you think?

I have had a terrible vision – it started when I was digesting the latest communication about today’s round of musical chairs where a few more chairs have been removed and the rest re-arranged in a neat “get a draw away from home” formation.

It had to do with shrinking pools – and the vision that flashed up was one I had seen on television in one of those fascinating nature programmes that both amaze and worry you.

There was a drought coming – the waters were receding, and in the deeper pools the shallower channels that connected them to the main flow were approaching dangerously thin levels – effectively cutting them off.

Some of the cleverer little fish spotted what was happening and put on their metaphoric pumps and with a deft flick of their tails “legged” it across the channel in the style of Indiana Jones and made it to a deeper pool and eventually out to the main stream – scary, but surprisingly invigorating!

The older, more “experienced” fish expected to “sit “it out in their old pond despite the diminishing amount of water (and therefore oxygen) and determined to carry on regardless, accepting that it was good for those upstarts to leave and make more room for the serious boys in the good old pond.

The upstarts would “never make it out there”, if we lie still and don’t breathe too heavily we can stay here until it gets better and the new water comes in again and then we can carry on from where we were.

Guess what – the water levels continued to drop, the channels to the rest of the world dried up completely cutting them off, and the big fish got into more and more difficulty. They could no longer get out, nor could they all fit into the reducing water and had to fight it out amongst themselves to see who could get to the bottom of the pond fastest (and stay there) and therefore, literally, survive. Then ones who couldn’t get to the bottom and stay there keeping their heads down out of sight, away from the sun’s heat, were slowly enduring an agonising death as they suffocated, which in turn was poisoning the pool and affecting everything in it, even those “hiding” out at the bottom.

Is this where we are now?

Do we need to put our pumps on and get our little feet out there in the main stream and leave the overcrowded, big, but shrinking, pond?

Are we being “poisoned” by the stagnation in the big pond?