Where’s the friction?

The Change Question: Where’s the friction?

Bob Sutton — a future guest on the pod — says:

“Friction problems squander the zeal, damage the health, and throttle the creativity and productivity of good people.”

The point of managing the friction? To make the right things easier and the wrong things harder.

But what people get wrong about friction is they think it’s all bad. That nirvana is somehow a “friction-free” experience.

Friction-free certainly sounds like it would be efficient. But you could also label that as smooth, slick or Teflon: when nothing sticks, nothing sticks.

And if nothing sticks, nothing changes.

Warning: tortured cricket metaphor approaching

I appreciate that it’s only a small number of my readers who know about cricket. I grew up playing it in Australia, and even I don’t fully understand how a game that lasts five days could be interesting.

I played in my teens, and I was a bowler. Unlike in baseball, where they seem to replace the ball every 10 seconds or so if it becomes even slightly blemished (clearly, it’s the true “snowflake” of sports balls), one of the arts of cricket is to nurture the ball over 80 overs (240 “pitches”) as it gets beaten up and before you’re eligible for a new one. 

One strategy is to polish one side of the ball, and keep the other side roughed up. That often allows the bowler to create some magic, as the ball starts to swing through the air. The polished side goes faster than the rough side, and everything gets trickier for the person batting.

You get the point.

You’re the bowler in the Change Project of Life.

What needs to be made faster, easier, slicker, smoother (or, channelling Leidy Klotz, removed altogether)?

And what needs a little more friction, to slow things down, deepen the engagement, and make things stick?

And a bonus: an early Tim Finn song to wrap things up.

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