{"id":6386,"date":"2022-05-24T17:52:07","date_gmt":"2022-05-24T15:52:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/joapen.com\/blog\/?p=6386"},"modified":"2022-05-24T18:04:39","modified_gmt":"2022-05-24T16:04:39","slug":"identifying-and-breaking-down-inertia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/joapen.com\/blog\/2022\/05\/24\/identifying-and-breaking-down-inertia\/","title":{"rendered":"Identifying and breaking down inertia"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Purpose of this article<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I am going to theorize about a phenomenon, inertia<\/strong>. When theorizing I am going to leave many things behind, but this simplification often allows the listener to differentiate what is important from what is superfluous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The context<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Things rarely happened as planned, in a world where information is asymmetric<\/strong> and many unexpected things happen, you have to define a long term purpose, organize yourself with some main drivers and start executing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During execution the reality vary and you will have to adjust. These variations provoke a gap between plan (strategy) and reality (execution) is what I call “friction”<\/span><\/strong>. The formal definition of “friction” is: the resistance that one surface or object encounters when moving over another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This friction or resistance of the plan to move through reality can have so many forms and ways to appear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First I would like to review different types of friction<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Short term and long term friction<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Short term friction<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Short term friction usually appears when a problem show up or an external factor influences our journey. The majority of operation leads work on this type of issues and focus their energies to solve them and stick to the plan (the strategy).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we are able to handle these issues and there is not a big accumulation of friction then we will be able to continue working on our execution without major deviation from the plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have to be aware that this short term friction sometimes leave some attrition<\/strong> on the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let’s be serious: friction is unavoidable<\/strong>, we have to deal with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Long term friction<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

When organizations are alive for years, there is an accumulation of friction that needs to be attended. It’s like my 14 years old car, there are so many pieces that have been there for a long time and they are attrited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This accumulation of friction is very dangerous because it can provoke inertia<\/strong> (a tendency to do nothing or to remain unchanged).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And this inertia<\/strong> can provoke a deviation from the “moral imperative<\/strong>” (our purpose as organization).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Acceptable and unacceptable friction<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Ideally there should not be “acceptable friction” but reality is that shit happens and we have to define our threshold about what is acceptable and what is not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are overloaded of short term goals that sometimes we lose the perspective of the long term run. This lack of perspective needs to be resolved so we are looking at the situation in a better way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is the origin of inertia?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

So many people are able to identify inertia in an organization, but this is not useful at all, it’s late. We should focus on the origins of this inertia first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have not a recipe about how to do it, there are many ways to identify and look into the roots of the long term issues we have in our organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let’s start with the definition of inertia<\/strong>: “a tendency to do nothing<\/span> or to remain unchanged<\/span>“. I will expand this definition:<\/p>\n\n\n\n