Many of you know I have a soft spot for the Mississippi river. In the group chat with friends who travelled down the river with me, we recently marvelled that our journey was over eight years ago now.
Related to the river, I loved reading Seth Gordon’s post today called ‘The Mississippi River paradox’. It’s got a great lesson in there (via a Mississippi river metaphor) about the changing nature of people and organisations.
I’m going to paste the whole post below because it is short and it’s hard to select a quote without the essence being lost.
There’s no water in that river that was there ten years ago.
The boundaries have shifted in that time as well, there’s no riverbank that’s exactly where it was. And the silt and the fish have all moved too.
So, what’s “the Mississippi River”?
It’s a label, a placeholder, and a marker–when the Mississippi does something we don’t expect it to do, we comment on it.
People are like this as well. What if you could only be known for the best (or the worst) thing you ever did? You’re not that person now, and it’s likely you’ll never be that person again. But that’s the label we gave you.
When we talk about the organization or the brand or that neighbor down the street, we act as these are immutable objects, basic unchanging elements or static facts.
But like rivers, people change.
When the label stops being useful, we should change it. The problem with holding a grudge is that it makes your hands too full to do anything useful