That’s right. This blogpost is all about that bottle of tomato ketchup. Or better: about the contents of the bottle and the way you need to give it a shake before the ketchup comes out. If you don’t want to end up with a farting sound and splashes of ketchup on your shirt, you need to give the bottle a shake.
Now think about what this means for your project.
In almost all of my projects the tipping point of the change does not come naturally. It needs to be tipped; just like that bottle of ketchup. Even on those projects where all the conditions are met – the textbook examples. They need a firm shake. And guess what…as an organizational change practitioner, this is your job.
That firm shake is an exaggeration of motion and emotion. It’s that statement that is stronger than appropriate. Sometimes it’s even a provocation. It provokes reaction, but most important: it breaks the hypnotizing resonance of the current state. Without it you are stuck like the ketchup in a bottle. Like a satellite in an orbit. Like Groundhog Day. Of course it will create resistance. Better even: be grateful for the resistance it creates (remember: resistance means pregnant!).
Call it compression. Call it combustion. Or any other way to make particles move. We are not given the bottle to make farting noises and splashes on our shirt. Even when all the conditions are met and the bottle is handed over to us on a golden plate… we need to take it and shake it.
