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September 2007
When Pain Is Good

Here's an interesting experiment: For the next week, stop using your dominant hand, and do everything with the other hand. How good do you think you'd get? How long do you think you'd last?

If experience is any guide, probably not long. Remember my column a couple years ago, when I had to drive around without a driver's side mirror? (See my July 2005 column at http://www.tgwall.com/leadershipunlimitedarchive-jul05.html)

I kept checking for a mirror that wasn't there, because that habit was so wired into my brain.

The same would probably happen with the wrong-handed experiment. You'd try to use the other hand, but you wouldn't be able to do it, because the dominant hand habit would keep kicking in.

One variable, however, would make you quite successful, and that variable is...pain.

A couple weeks ago I overdid it using my favorite lawn tools, the edger, the trimmer, and the blower. I overdid it so much, I developed a severe, and I mean severe, case of tendonitis in my right wrist and hand.

The pain was so severe that I started doing everything
left-handed. Initially I'd forget, but pain is a powerful
teacher, so powerful that it didn't take me long to become pretty adept at being a lefty.

Thanks to pain, I started doing things left handed without thinking about it.

The principle here is that it's much easier to change behavior (your own, your team's, your organization's) when pain is involved. Pain is what spurs us on. Without pain we have no incentive or motivation to change.

The pain, however, must be sufficient to motivate. A minor irritant won't do.

A few years ago I worked with an organization that had a troubled executive. He'd been with the company a long time, and at one time had done a good job. But he got set in ways that produced mediocre results. He was on cruise control.

Nobody wanted to fire him because of his longevity. They tried everything to get him to improve. Everything short of inducing pain. The owners weren't going to fire him, and the executive knew it. He was experiencing only minor irritations.

When new owners took over, they wanted everyone to perform.  They applied enough pressure, primarily by threatening to reduce his pay. A few months later the executive voluntarily left.

For him, the pain was in his wallet. Otherwise he'd still be there, giving mediocrity a bad name.

When you want change, and nothing else is working, discover where the pain is.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for rewards and incentives. But when they don't work, pain is the answer. Rewards and incentives wouldn't get me to switch from right handed to left handed. Severe tendonitis did.

"The timing isn't right" is what someone says when he or she doesn't want to begin a project. What it really means is, "My pain isn't great enough."

Sometimes finding the pain is the key to change. Where is your pain? Where is the pain for that underperforming team or division? And what are you going to do about it?

Until next edition, keep leading the way!

Copyright (C) 2007 by Terry Wall

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