“The most effective way to do it, is to do it”
Amelia Earhart.
An earlier post entitled, “The OSS inertia principle,” spoke of the challenge of nudging massive organisations from a state of inertia to a state of momentum.
In some cases, thinking, talking and documenting represent the application of force that gets an organisation moving. In large organisations, they can be a form of procrastination as they don’t provide enough force to overcome inertia.
Doing seems to provide more leverage. Creating something, demonstrating something, configuring something – they all seem to provide greater leverage for a given amount of effort. Even if the activity of doing is deemed to be progressing in the wrong direction, at least momentum has been gained and can be redirected towards a new target.
It’s much easier to get feedback on something tangible, when people can see it and provide confirmation or constructive reassessment comments, than pondering about hours of what-if scenarios.
Sure – thinking, talking and documenting can act as fire-starters but doing seems to set out a line in the sand that constrains the what-if scenarios into something more manageable for the team to focus their attentions on.