Avoid becoming a boiling frog

08 Jul Avoid becoming a boiling frog

The famous 19th-century fable says a frog in boiling water will jump out. However, when put in tepid water that slowly increases in temperature, the frog will not notice the change and will die.

Spoiler. It’s not true. A frog placed in boiling water will die immediately, and when cooler water is heated slowly, the frog will hop out when it is too warm. However, despite the fallacy, the underlying metaphor is useful.

Enterprises often struggle with people’s unwillingness to change problem behaviours. Especially when they simmer within entrenched habits and routine processes.

The tiny instances in someone’s everyday unheroic work are easy to ignore. Still, left to accumulate, they compound and can erode the value stored in your brand. Their very insignificance makes them dangerous.

For example, a person crams a couple of last-minute to-do’s into their schedule and arrives late to a meeting. A choice that subtly undermines the organisation’s core value of ‘integrity’.

The occasional late appearance isn’t the problem. However, no one says anything, signalling that it’s okay, and the number of times they’re late begins to mount. The temperature in the pot ticks upwards. The behaviour spreads. Thinking it’s okay, others show up late, too.

The mindset metastasises beyond meetings, and fudging promises become the cultural norm. What started in that first meeting settles into a routine. Then, a habit. Eventually, it jumps into view as a problem that carries actual costs in stymied efforts, creeping deadlines, and corroding confidence.

Life is littered with examples of little things that become big things when left unattended. What we eat and drink, how much we exercise, the time we spend on social media. A Big Mac and fries now and then isn’t a problem. Eat them every day, and you’ll likely succumb to a host of health problems over time.

Serious outcomes can result when behaviours build up. Boeing’s recently highlighted history is an example of the danger held in isolated habits and routines when they become accepted practices. A decades-long creep of poor individual decisions has visibly impacted their brand. Landing them in regulatory hot water, cratering their market capital, and leaving passengers searching for other planes to fly in.

Still, not every instance becomes a Boeing-size catastrophe. It’s possible the niggles may merely add friction to the organisation’s day-to-day work and lead to less reliable results.

Either way, and no matter the size or kind of the enterprise. Examine your habits and routines before you turn up the heat. Where is value silently evaporating? Take a look at your unheroic work. What activities are compounding quietly in the background? How can you adjust what you’re doing before it grows into a problem?

If you want to work on your brand, avoid the usual suspect shiny objects. And look at the accumulating impact of behaviours hidden in habits and routines.

Next up. Part three in my series about scaling the Values Pyramid. Getting people to put them to work every day.

Thanks for reading.