The Boulder Over Your Head
Gray tepid monotony. Does that describe your organization?
A client of mine recently forwarded to me a short article from the Wall Street Journal with this note: “Seems like there is a blog in here somewhere.” The article, by Steven Pinker of Harvard, Why Things Fall Apart, is about the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
My first reaction was to laugh. After all, I write a blog focusing on business management. What does thermodynamics have to do with improving your management skills and your business results? As I read on, I realized my client is right. There is a direct correlation.
Pinker writes: “The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that in an isolated system (one that is not taking in energy) entropy always increases over time. Closed systems inexorably become less structured, less organized, less able to accomplish interesting and useful outcomes, until they slide into an equilibrium of gray, tepid monotony and stay there.”
Sound familiar?
It’s the nature of things to degenerate into a less structured state, a less organized state, a less useful state. When you think about it, it’s amazing that anything works efficiently, since to keep things working well requires constant effort against the universal force of entropy. Yes, it’s you against the universe.
Too often, we don’t fight back. We don’t make the effort or our efforts are half-hearted and fall far short of what is required to successfully move forward.
And then things fall apart and results deteriorate. You look for someone or something to blame, never realizing that the fault rests with you. Your failure to act is causing you to slide into that gray monotony. It’s driving you towards poor results and even failure.
Meanwhile those who constantly exert energy and never rest in their battle to overcome complacency and the forces of decay successfully rush past you.
It requires continuous effort and a culture that expects success to reach and remain at the forefront of your industry. So much can go wrong. The forces of entropy, the entire universe, is aligned to continuously fight against you. And the more complex things get, the more there is to break and the easier it is to get pulled down.
Often, when something seemingly minor goes awry in my daily work life, for instance some small software or internet glitch, I’m reminded of just how amazing it is that these vast systems work at all. So much can go wrong and so much effort is required to keep them running and develop them further. I never realized this was the second law of thermodynamics at play.
And now I’m even more impressed by the technical experts whose drive and effort helps my missives get written and properly dispatched around the world. They fight the universe no matter how hard it tries to tear them down.
The second law of thermodynamics…the boulder always hanging over your head.
Keep looking up and you’ll remember that it’s up to you to keep it suspended. Your desire to do whatever it takes to keep it from squashing you flat will encourage you to continually push back hard. It will drive you to success.
Gray, tepid monotony or lively, energetic activity? Don’t let entropy win.