Eating soup with chopsticks

Imagine that the only utensil you had ever used was a pair of chopsticks and someone served you soup. How long would you try to eat your soup using chopsticks before realising that they are perhaps not the ideal tool for the job?

Sure, you could drink straight from the bowl; being careful not to burn your mouth. Yes, the chopsticks would be useful if there were noodles in the soup – but however you look at it, chopsticks are not the best utensil to use for soup!

Someone using chopsticks to hold a spoon so they can eat their soup

Would you be fearful of the spoon? You’ve never seen one before, never held one, and never used one to eat with. Someone might show you how easy it is to use and how quickly you can now eat – but your fear of something new may prevent you from accepting it, despite seeing it work and doing something that makes your life easier. What would persuade you to try it? If soup was the only food you were going to eat from today forward, hunger may eventually force you to try it – the fear of dying greater than the fear of the spoon.

New technology and digital tools are often viewed with a similar level of trepidation. Having things we are familiar with taken away from us is an irrational response deep rooted to the uncomfortable feeling it creates. In order to overcome it, we have to rationalise what we are seeing.

Despite the fact that what we are using may not be the best tool for the job, that fear can prevent us from trying something new which may revolutionise how we work and the results we achieve. The fear of losing something is greater than the fear of missing out.

This excellent article from Forbes provides 14 strategies for evaluating something new so you can make a good decision about the opportunity it presents. From perspective changes, to driving your curiosity, to getting disruptive, there are many ways to avoid the fear and form a rational opinion about what we are seeing.

An image showing many types of information floating over the outline of a person

Infonomics and the tools associated with it is a topic which I believe invokes fear in many. It is new, it is disruptive and it requires us to break away from the conscious and unconscious biases we all carry.

The concepts around the Digital Twin of the Organisation are another topic which causes a similar reaction. Modelling how our organisations operate to a level of detail which enables us to simulate change and improve our decision-making regarding change can be seen as opening Pandora’s box.

There are tools that we have great familiarity with which are perhaps the chopsticks when we really need to find a spoon! It isn’t that the spoon is better than the chopsticks, only that in some circumstances, the spoon is more appropriate than the chopsticks.

If you think you’re stuck using chopsticks, or are curious to see what a new spoon looks like, drop us a line and I have no doubt that we can help you to consume the soup of change in a new way.