Transform - Cucumber or pickle?
One day my boss returned from a conference and asked, "Mark are you a cucumber or a pickle?" Now, this did not really surprise or offend me, so I took a couple of seconds to think about my response. Before I can answer, he interjected, “Which are you?” I opted for the cucumber, which pleased my boss, but also sent him off on a rant. Apparently, cucumbers are fresh, ready to go and vibrant, while pickles are what cucumbers used to be, before they got caught up in the world of office politics and needless meetings, losing the initial zest they brought to the organization. He then asked a much more complicated question, “How do we reverse the pickling process that has happened to us recently?” It had been three years since my return to the organization, and I had to admit that I had lost some of my exuberance. When I countered that he had been happy with his own pickling process up until recently, he not-so-gently ribbed me for allowing that to happen.
Are you currently being pickled? Are you happy about? Or do you want to do something about it? Now here is the tricky thing about pickling: it happens slowly, over time, and you may not even realize it's happening, so you have to do the occasional rabble-rousing to shake off the pickle juice and get yourself going again. Start engaging in innovation again, even if you just start spending thirty minutes a day reading on the subject; and talking to your customers, asking them for a problem or issue they have been struggling with. Thinking is a great way to stay fresh; it is staying in our same old comfortable routine that allows for the process to sneak up on us. Challenge your team to keep each other fresh; it can be little things like team brain-teasers or trivia, but get you and your team thinking again, or you will end up in a pickle!
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