How To Deal With Drag By Coming To The Middle Ground

Image by piviso from Pixabay

In the Tour de France pelotons, riders in a group save energy by riding close to other riders. This practice significantly reduces drag and riding in the middle ground of a group, drag can be reduced to as little as 5–10%.

Scientifically speaking, drag is a force acting in opposition to the relative motion of the moving object (regarding a surrounding fluid).

Our teams experience drag too… especially when change is in the air. When the momentum of change speeds up, opposition to that change increases. We could slow down to release the drag but that’s not always a great tactic in the Tour de France. What’s the answer that helps us finish strong? Come to the middle ground.

Here’s one example of the original version:

We ran a morphed version of this process with a staff group earlier this week. The staff had been experiencing some, erm, tensions. After listening to leadership to uncover some of the tensions, we asked for the staff to be organised into cross-faculty teams of about six people. We gave them all one red post-it-note and one green post-it-note.

Here are the instructions:

1. This session requires participants to be positioned to listen. We are not here to debate or to convince but to understand.
2. When a statement is shown on the screen, if you agree, place the green post-it-note in front of you. If you disagree, place the red post-it-note in front of you. If you are unsure, place the notes side-by-side.
3. Once everyone has completed this, those with the green post-it-notes share their thinking first. The red post-it-notes follow and then, finally, those who are unsure speak.
4. Cue: next statement.

Leadership commented that this simple activity changed the whole climate of staff response to the change.

Give it go!