Organizational transformation – and Physics

I was totally lost in my Physics class in high school. I just could not understand it at all. I really thought that physics was about numbers (I was lost in Math as well – I thought that it too was only about numbers). I have since struggled with Math and Stats at university (took that course 3 times before I could pass) and Managerial Economics at business school (scraped through based on my active class participation in just asking questions that indicated how lost I was).

It wasn’t until fairly recently that I “got” what Physics and Math is all about. It’s not about numbers; it’s about the basic laws of our lives on this planet and beyond. And it applies to everything. I had this learning when Robert Wynter, my former business partner in Growth Facilitators said to me a few years ago: “You know Marguerite, you can apply physics to organizations. For example, Newton’s First Law of Motion explains the difficulty an organization has in changing its status quo”. Newton’s First Law states:

A body remains at rest or in motion with a constant velocity unless an external force acts on the body.

BOOM! I got it! So the organization is piddling along and everyone is saying, “We have to change” yet nothing happens. Until… a crisis or a new CEO. Now the organization is FORCED to get out of its moribund state and move with a different velocity. The crisis or the new CEO was the “external force”.

Taking this further, it applies to our personal lives as well. How often do we piddle along, feeling that there is more to life and that we want to change; yet we don’t until… So we continue eating poorly and not exercising until the external force of a stroke or heart attack acts on our body. We pay scant attention to our spouse until another person, an external force, acts on his/her body (literally).

Here is the learning for me – we can consciously create and be the external force in our lives by finding or creating a compelling vision of what we want to achieve. That vision now becomes the external force that compels us to act, change our velocity and therefore our results. Oh I am beginning “get” Physics now and may well do high school Physics again. Thank you Newton. Thank you Robert.