{"id":807,"date":"2011-05-21T10:40:40","date_gmt":"2011-05-21T10:40:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saasoft.com\/blog\/?p=807"},"modified":"2011-05-21T10:40:40","modified_gmt":"2011-05-21T10:40:40","slug":"boiled-frogs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/?p=807","title":{"rendered":"Anyone for more Boiled Frog?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>There is a famous\u00a0metaphor for the dangers of denial and complacency called the boiled frog syndrome<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Apparently if you drop a frog into hot water it will notice and jump out \u00a0but if you put a frog in water at a comfortable temperature and then slowly heat it up it will\u00a0not jump out – it\u00a0does not notice the slowly rising temperature until it is too late – and it boils.<\/p>\n

The metaphor is used to highlight the dangers of\u00a0not\u00a0being aware enough of our surroundings to notice when things are getting “hot”\u00a0– which means we do not\u00a0act in time\u00a0to prevent a catastrophe.<\/p>\n

There is another\u00a0side to the boiled frog syndrome – and this when improvements are made incrementally by someone else\u00a0and we do not notice those either. This is the same\u00a0error of\u00a0complacency and there is no positive feedback so the improvement investment fizzles out – without us\u00a0noticing that either.\u00a0 This is a\u00a0disadvantage\u00a0of incremental improvement –\u00a0we\u00a0only notice the effect if we deliberately measure at intervals and compare present with past. Not many of us appear\u00a0to have the foresight or fortitude\u00a0to do that. We are the engineers of our own mediocrity.<\/p>\n

There is\u00a0an alternative though – it is called improvement-by-design. The difference from improvement-by-increments is that with design you deliberately plan\u00a0to make a big beneficial change happen quickly\u00a0– and you can do this by testing the design before implementing it so that you know it is feasible.\u00a0 When the change is made\u00a0the big beneficial difference is noticed – WOW! – and\u00a0everyone notices:\u00a0supporters and\u00a0cynics alike.\u00a0 Their responses\u00a0are different though – the advocates are jubilant and\u00a0the cynics are shocked. The cynics\u00a0worldview is suddenly challenged – and the feeling is one of positive confusion. They say “Wow! That’s a miracle – how did you do that?”.<\/p>\n

So when\u00a0we\u00a0understand enough to design a change then we should use improvement-by-design; and when we don’t understand enough we have no choice but to do use\u00a0improvement-by-discovery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is a famous\u00a0metaphor for the dangers of denial and complacency called the boiled frog syndrome. Apparently if you drop a frog into hot water it will notice and jump out \u00a0but if you put a frog in water at a comfortable temperature and then slowly heat it up it will\u00a0not jump out – it\u00a0does … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Anyone for more Boiled Frog?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,41,43,47],"tags":[61,65,84,91,138,141,161,174],"class_list":["post-807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections","category-stories","category-why","category-transactional-analysis","tag-boiled-frog-syndrome","tag-change","tag-cynics","tag-design","tag-improvement","tag-incremental","tag-magic","tag-miracles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}