Rick Maurer's Tip #80

Lily Tomlin once said, "For fast acting relief, try slowing down."

She hits on a wonderful paradox that affects all of us who work on any time of change. Slowing down for the right reasons often makes things go much faster.

I was just practicing the unaccompanied Suite in D minor by J.S. Bach. I routinely hit passages where I messed up. My tendency was to keep playing and hope that those hard passages would magically disappear the next time through. And that didn't happen. But, when I was willing to stop pretending that I was actually playing music, and work on those passages at ridiculously slow tempos, I started to get the fingerings and rhythms in my bones rather quickly. And I started to see little things in the music that I had missed. And it is often those little things that turn a performance from mechanical to musical. 

And, of course, this is true of organizational change as well. It can seem like we are making music during those planning meetings. (Maybe all the clip art will disguise the fact that we don't really know as much we should about the change. And maybe no one will notice those little mistakes or major clams along the way). Yet when we do slow down, we begin to see challenges and possibilities that were glossed over when we tried to introduce change at allegro furioso.   

On December 7 at 11 AM Eastern (-5 GMT), Heather Stagl will interview me on resistance to change (what else?). You can access this show by web radio interview They will even send you a reminder if you like. Not only that, it looks like you can call in. I hope you'll join us.