In a world of disruptive change, most people are battling to keep up. Some even actively oppose change.
In this 6 minute video, Graeme Codrington of the TomorrowToday Global team, gives an analogy that might help you and your team understand and begin to engage with this resistance to change. He talks about why we still use the QWERTY keyboard layout, even on our mobile devices (QWERTY are the keys across the top left of the English keyboard. The analogy would still apply for other language keyboards that are based on old typewriter layouts).
For discussion, he asks three key questions:
- Why are you still using a keyboard designed over a century ago, for a different device, with the express purpose of slowing typing down?
- The probable answer to the first question is “I didn’t know”. So, the second question is, Now that you know you can change your keyboard, will you? Some people answer “yes” to this, but very, very few actually do. Why is that so?
- The answers to the second question include: standardisation, we’re used to it, we don’t have the time for a learning curve, etc. How might these answers correlate to the way in which you and your team approach team in your organisations? How might this help you to engage with change?
PS, if you’re interested in some of the background to how the QWERTY keyboard came into being, you will enjoy reading this piece of research. The bottom line is that we actually don’t really know where the QWERTY layout came from.