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Don’t Force It
Especially when trying to bring about change.
My father was a car mechanic. When I was a kid, he tried to teach me all about cars, but I wasn’t very interested. After a while, he might have thought he was wasting his time, but one of his lessons stuck with me. I think about it every day.
“Don’t force it,” he often said.
He was troubled by the way I was so hell bent on getting those bolts loosened that I would stand on the wrench, extend it with a pipe, or perform any number of crazy stunts to get it to turn. A couple times, I snapped the bolt or rounded it off. Then we had had real problems. That’s why he kept repeating, “Don’t force it.”
“How am I supposed to get the bolt off, if I don’t force it? It won’t go.”
“Don’t force it. Understand it.”
There would be a blank look on my face. “How do you understand a bolt?”
“Look at things from the bolt’s point of view and work with it. What’s keeping it from turning? Is it rust? Then WD-40 would help. Is it in too tight? Heating it up, then cooling it down will loosen it. Is there a nut you have to hold at the other end? Do you even have the right sized wrench?”
I thought he was nuts, trying to understand the problem from the bolt’s point of view; but his advice…
