Mar 28, 2023·edited Mar 29, 2023Liked by Marc Scheff
Brilliant piece, Marc.
I’ve noticed this through what I’ve witnessed with clients’s children who have gone to therapeutic treatment programs. The most successful outcomes are the ones where the kid’s treatment program included the FAMILIES working with the staff while the kids are away.
I’ve used the gear metaphors. Through the program, the kid’s gear shape is changing. If nothing changes in the family system, when the kid returns to the home, they new gear shape is ground back into the shape the system remembers and expects to return. The system must change to mesh with, to receive the changed shape.
On a smaller scale, this is the same with company off-sites: the leadership team goes off for a 1-day, 2-day, or 3-day gathering to work on the team and amazing things surface, the team shifts, spirits are lifted, and everyone is changed.
When they return on Monday, the system they Lee turn to still has the same gearing it did when they left and immediately begins to grind them back to expected form.
Without shifts to the system, friction ensues, and the force of the past grinds down progress.
I think that’s a great way of approaching this concept.
The insight I’ve seen helps most people from CEOs to screenwriters here is that we can change the system. There is always something that we can control. Adjustments to our environment, expectations, time spent, boundaries, vision. Even little things like communicating about new small habits or practices. These are tools for adjusting the gears around us so they fit and the machine not only works smoothly but better.
Brilliant piece, Marc.
I’ve noticed this through what I’ve witnessed with clients’s children who have gone to therapeutic treatment programs. The most successful outcomes are the ones where the kid’s treatment program included the FAMILIES working with the staff while the kids are away.
I’ve used the gear metaphors. Through the program, the kid’s gear shape is changing. If nothing changes in the family system, when the kid returns to the home, they new gear shape is ground back into the shape the system remembers and expects to return. The system must change to mesh with, to receive the changed shape.
On a smaller scale, this is the same with company off-sites: the leadership team goes off for a 1-day, 2-day, or 3-day gathering to work on the team and amazing things surface, the team shifts, spirits are lifted, and everyone is changed.
When they return on Monday, the system they Lee turn to still has the same gearing it did when they left and immediately begins to grind them back to expected form.
Without shifts to the system, friction ensues, and the force of the past grinds down progress.
“ Without shifts to the system, friction ensures”
I think that’s a great way of approaching this concept.
The insight I’ve seen helps most people from CEOs to screenwriters here is that we can change the system. There is always something that we can control. Adjustments to our environment, expectations, time spent, boundaries, vision. Even little things like communicating about new small habits or practices. These are tools for adjusting the gears around us so they fit and the machine not only works smoothly but better.
The world is happening FOR us, not TO us.