During a quick road trip this past weekend to Goodland, Kansas with my 11-year-old son, I finally opened Theory of Constraints by Eliyahu Goldratt. I didn’t read as much as I hoped (but you don’t go on a mini-vacation with your munchkin to ignore him). However, I loved Goldratt’s discussion of how change induces emotion (and what to do about it):
Let’s summarize once again this devastating process that connects improvements with emotional resistance.
Any improvement is change.
Leading to:
Any change is a perceived threat to security.
Leading to:
Any threat on security gives rise to emotional resistance.
Leading to:
Emotional resistance can only be overcome by a stronger emotion.
He then explains although that stronger emotion could be negative (“We are trying to overcome the immediate insecurity resulting from change, by provoking the long term insecurity of what will happen if we don’t change”), that’s not a good long-term plan. Instead, we want to develop an “emotion of the inventor” in people.
However, I will leave it there. You can get more by grabbing his book (well worth the price) and checking out chapter 2. 🙂
P.S. So, to date myself, every time I think about the title of this post, “Change and Emotion,” a Tesla song comes to mind:
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