Understanding the Whole

When a company is in the middle of an organizational change, it is sometimes difficult to understand your/others roles and the expectations. It's easy to stay with the comfortable old routines and do what you have always done. After all, you know what to do, you have done the same thing plenty of times before.

But here's the catch: what if things around you have changed? Things you know how to do might not deliver the value anymore the same way they used to. Or it can even be that the activity you keep on doing is creating a major pain for someone else in the organization.

Unfortunately I can't think of a good example where organs of living organisms were scrambled, but with organizations this can happen. And then it doesn't really work out well if the lungs still think they are fingers and forget to breath. It might have severe consequences even though they are still able to type like they used to. Like in the good old times.

Break the old habits! If you have been assigned to a new role, check what's really expected from you. Are you a muscle cell doing some heavy lifting or should you be concentrated on thinking about the future like the rest of the brain cells? How does your work affect the whole?