Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Mesmerizing chickens

I'm not sure if I believe this, but I'm dying to try it.

So first, you take a piece of chalk and draw a line in your drive way. Easy enough.
Next you go out back to the hen house and grab a chicken. A bit harder.
Then you grab the chicken's head and hold him so that its beak is touching the line. Supposedly if you hold really tightly with its beak touching the ground staring at the line, then after a few minutes, if you let go, the chicken won't move. It just stands there, mesmerized, staring at the line.

Alan Hirsch uses that analogy to describe the effect that organizations can have on us. When we've spent so much time looking at things in a very particular way, it can leave us rather mesmerized. It becomes quite difficult to lift our head up and look around and realize that what we're doing is a bit silly and there's a world full of other possibilities out there.

May we take our eyes of the line and see what's possible.

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