Inertia

One of Newton's Laws of Motion (he had three major ones and his "laws" ruled the multiverse until Einstein came along and made everything complicated - they are still good as long as you don't go too fast or too near a black hole :-) states that a body in motion tends to stay in motion and a body at rest tends to stay at rest.  That tendency to just sit there motionless and the energy it takes to overcome that sittingness and get moving defines the inertia of the object.  This is why, when your car dies on the road, it takes a big push to get the thing moving, but once it's moving, it tends to roll a lot easier and in fact, you have to pull on it or use the brakes or run to the front real fast when you want it to stop.  You have to apply enough force to overcome its inertia to get it rolling and then you have to apply extra force again to make it stop.

But I have discovered that people have inertia too - there is a tendency to do things as we have always done them and it takes an added amount of energy to make a change.  If the change is a good one and you do it for a few years, then that becomes the new version of reality and we do that new thing until another amount of energy is applied to change things again.  If you do not add energy to the system, the thing just goes the way it has always gone.

Of course any system has a limited amount of energy floating around in it available to do stuff.  Unfortunately, this is also true of a Grand Line Officer.  So we tend to triage a bit and focus on some things and not all things, because there often isn't enough energy to do everything.  You can get around that a bit by doing lots and lots of planning and prep work ahead of time so that the slingshot is wound and ready to go when the time comes, but still, there are lots of things that we are not allowed to do ahead of time too.

I've been thinking about this because I have been discussing some changes in scheduling and formatting for next year with the appropriate people and what I find amazing is the number of times that I say I would like to see something done differently and someone else says, "Oh yes, we really need to do that.  We've thought about it and talked about it for years, but we've never tried changing it." Or they say, "Oh yes, our members have wanted us to do that for a long time, so that would be great."  While I am the first to admit that it is nice to hear that one's ideas are not all out in the tall weeds, I get puzzled about why changes weren't made earlier.

As near as I can figure out, it seems to be either a Forest for the Trees problem or an Authority problem.  Either because they've always done it that way, they are too close to the problem to see what needs doing, but when you show it to them they have an Ah-Hah moment or they are worried that they don't have the power to Change The Tradition of Forever, but if the AGM wants it different when she is WGM, well then all to the good because then it is her fault and not the local members' responsibility.

But the problem is that this only works to the extent I know about it and have the chance to help with the planning for next year.  Where I don't know about it, I can't help.  So I am wondering what the best way would be to help get people thinking about what they do and if they could do better.  How do you encourage people to really look at what they do, sort of from the outside, and ask themselves if this is the best way or just the way it's always been?  When I have the answer to that, I bet I could make some real money. ;-)

Next weekend, I am in Riverside and Ventura.