THE CENTRAL LINE -- "All I want to know is when to cancel the milkman?"

The single hardest thing about managing change seems to be one of the easiest: telling those affected when the key events are happening... and when it will all end.

We are creatures of habit, after all.  We like to play on our spontaneity.  We think that we're unpredictable and wild and crazy.  But we're not.

I read a great book a few years ago called Chasing Daylight.  It's the true story of a senior exec at a global accounting firm who found out he had a limited time to live.  So he set about putting all his relationships in order.  It's compelling reading.  Not least because it highlights our fear of uncertainty and death.  And what we might do if we really knew what the timetable was.

(Sorry about that morbid side-bar.)

If people know what the future will look like they're pretty good at making plans.  We can adapt to almost everything.  I have been talking a lot recently about living in a car under a bridge.  Because I see that as a future option for me.  And with that knowledge I feel that I can adapt.

Without a view of 'when we will know what' we cannot plan properly.  And then we start to plan for all sorts of possibilities.  And that's when things get ugly.

In a vacuum the smallest scrap of information becomes incredibly important.  Minor details take on massive significance.

All that because we couldn't communicate an end-date.

This entry finishes now.  You'll be okay.

/df