Flex_ Do Something Different - Ben [12]
I have held positions of considerable responsibility and had jobs in senior management that some people would find stressful. I have been able to see how demands placed upon me might be construed as stressful by others. I have had bosses with whom I have had to behave in different ways, to accommodate their different styles, whims and predilections. Had I not been able to flex myself, their foibles, habits and even unreasonable demands would have stressed me. But I found I could subtly change their behaviour by adapting how I responded. By flexing I could de-stress the situation and cope with many significant managerial predicaments, knowing when to be assertive and when to back down, for example, or understanding on which occasions it is important to give your boss public support, and when not to.
Or knowing when and when not to involve others in decision-making and knowing when to diffuse a situation with humour, and when gravitas is called for. Similarly I have made a point of empowering others to take more responsibility, to teach themselves to operate with awareness and to allow them the freedom to learn and to respond. So my job has been made even less stressful by developing and being tolerant of the range of different personal strengths of my team. I hope too that I have shown by my own behaviour that there are many alternative ways, flexible ways, of approaching a situation instead of being a habit machine.
17. Small changes, big consequences
What is responsible for the differences in how people respond to their environment? As an undergraduate at Keele University I came across René Thom’s Cusp Catastrophe Theorem. This preceded Chaos Theory, which people are now fond of applying to management, or as a way of understanding organisations or predicting stock market performance. It is akin to what Malcolm Gladwell calls ‘Tipping Points’ – how small changes, often imperceptible, can make a big difference.
The essence of Thom’s Theory is that discontinuity (catastrophe) in a system can sometimes happen if the system cannot cope with or absorb the stresses it is placed under. This brings about a new state without a route back to the old state. Push a bottle until it falls and you cannot push it back. When a system has flipped it cannot return to its original state. This explains why certain experiences can have lasting effects on some people and not others. What causes the system to flip (or the person to undergo a change in state) may have little to do with the experience itself but have more to do with the state of the person at the time. That is how an apparently innocuous event can be catastrophic for one person and virtually inconsequential for another and why we cannot easily erase some experiences. Just as we cannot suppress thinking about a white bear if told not to think of one, we cannot forget traumatic events (whether or not others would find them traumatic). Many problems cannot just be unlearned; there is no going back to the original state. One of the benefits of flex is that it enlarges the system’s capacity to absorb and respond to events, without tipping over into catastrophe. In effect flex inoculates the person against catastrophe. It expands them beyond just operating with 1/10th of their potential system.
The theory also enlightens us as to why many apparently new experiences are treated as if they are ones we have experienced before. A person who has not learned to flex, whose system is narrow and constrained, will make the new appear old by their