Stasis is a mirage
I remember the day well. My wife was working and it was my job to take our first kid to the doctor for his 1 year checkup. At the pediatrician’s office, the doctor told me that our baby could be done bottle feeding. Do you know how many bottles it takes to keep a baby fed? An entire cabinet’s worth. I came home and looked at that full shelf of bottles and I couldn’t believe it. Just like that, our little dude was done with bottles and moving on.
One definition of stasis is: A condition of balance among various forces; motionlessness. Physical objects look stable, but they’re not. Bodies of water are always experiencing changes in temperature. The high and low pressure of the weather are mixing together to create movement. Rain, wind, and sunlight are changing the world around you, often in invisible ways.
Ernest Hemingway was asked about how he lost his fortune. Famously, he remarked that he found himself bankrupt two ways. In typical minimalist whit, he said, “Gradually, then suddenly.” Or the the singer Pink’s great line about relationships, “When it’s good, then it’s good, it’s so good till it goes bad."
So many things in relationships and organizational culture are that way. They’re slow until they’re not. They’re stable until they’re not. They’re balanced until they tip.
There are two competing ideas: Newton vs. Aristotle
STABLE. On one hand we have the idea from Newton that bodies in motion tend to stay in motion. It’s the force of the organization that keeps people in place. That, once someone is hired for a position, the momentum and trajectory will keep them in place long term.
MOVEMENT. But another principle applies: Nature abhors a vacuum. Top performers, in particular, will feel the ebb and flow of the organization. They will see the drift of incentive. The high achievers are adept at feeling the temperature and pressure changes in the organization. They sense when momentum is slowing down. And they sense where it is speeding up.
These two forces of staying and going are always at work among individuals inside the organization. Even if people aren’t aware of the changes, my guess is that they can feel the change in pressure. The day or the meeting just feels different.
-Is there incentive to stay?
-Is there incentive to leave?
How can you create:
-systems
-processes
-interpersonal culture
To encourage people to stay?
(This is all assuming that you want people to stay. If you want them to leave, maybe that’s another issue entirely.)
Think about this idea in terms of pressure or temperature in a science experiment. There’s a tide moving below the surface. Bodies of water are heating and cooling. The people around you are changing in ways that you can’t see. Stasis is a mirage.