Going Viral
“An inefficient virus kills its host. A clever virus stays with it.” -James Lovelock
I was talking with a friend the other day about that magical time you experience when you first start with a company. You know, it’s that honeymoon period where you feel like everything you do is effective. People are nice to you, things are easy, the company feels like someplace you can make a difference. You are on top of the world. Things just work.
Of course it doesn’t last. After a while, for some reason it gets harder and harder to create change – to do something new. People don’t think those ideas sound all that novel anymore. Getting things done starts to feel slow and laborious. Soon you are just another one of the gang. Part of the status quo.
If you are a consultant, perhaps it’s time to declare victory and move on. After all, the average consulting contract isn’t that long. Perhaps only 6 months. You introduce some change and then leave before things get too tough. That’s a good thing too, because before long, they’re on to you.
So what is happening here? I have a theory. It’s a little whacky, but hear me out: I think that a workplace is a living system and that when a new person joins it’s kind of like introducing a virus. The system, the corporate entity, doesn’t know how to handle it. It doesn’t recognize it. It doesn’t know how to react. So the virus…er…person, simply by their very existence, provokes a reaction in the system. Of course living systems adapt. Slowly sometimes, but they do adapt. After six months or so, you are no longer an unknown virus. The antibodies in the system have learned to react to your novel behavior. You are no longer novel to the system. You are part of the system. That is good and bad. It’s not all bad being part of the system. But you may find that its now really hard to get the same level of response to ideas for change. After all, they’ve heard it before. You are now a known quantity.
So what do you do? Move on? What if you aren’t a consultant? Well we know the system reacts to a novel inputs. You are no longer novel, so…you have to make yourself into something novel if you expect to create a similar impact to when you first joined. You must make yourself into something new and different that the system doesn’t expect.
You must change.
If you want to change the system you need to change yourself. Otherwise the system will recognize you and will fail to react. You need to change your behavior, so that the system has to adapt to your new behavior. You don’t ask others to change. You change yourself and the system will change to adapt to you.
Maybe its time to give the organization a virus.