Frogs

This week's self-help books were Deep Change and Resonant Leadership. I had designs on reading the whole books, but I ended up reading the most important chapters (for a quiz), again, like usual. Right before class. And not really read, but skimmed for bold/italicized words.

Anyway, the funny thing about both books is they mentioned the boiling frog parable. I've never heard of this, but it's pretty simple. Scientists discovered that a frog, dropped in to a pot of boiling water, will immediately jump out and save itself. But if the water is brought to boiling with the frog already in the pot, the little guy cooks. Pretty horrific.

The moral of the story is that you should take note of small, gradual changes around you before it's too late. We're good at catching when things change quickly and dramatically, but those little changes can be just as bad.

Now, even after reading basically real-world examples of the same thing, the first thing I thought was, "Gross! Who would do that to a little froggy??" But then I got over my girly and remembered this is tough-guy MBA world. Boys like frogs. Really, it's good advice.

On a side note, most of the real world examples involve high-level executive overachieving men who can't seem to balance their work and personal life. The outcomes are usually, "well, his wife divorced him, but now that he's realized the errors of his ways he's determined things will work out with the new one." What?? I'm sure the ex-wife is glad for that... Don't worry, though, there's usually a token example of a female executive. And she's usually, as my classmate would call it, a witch with a capital B, who succeeds beyond everyone's expectations only to find that no one likes her and she suddenly finds the need to change her ways. Yup, we've really made progress, ladies.