I was reading a book by Max Bazerman “The Power of noticing”. He has a chapter in the book titled “Missing the obvious on a Slippery Slope”. This chapter is based on the results of a study done with Francesca Gino.
The Frog, the Boiling Pot of Water & “#MeToo”
This is very similar to the story of the frog in a pot of boiling water. If you put a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will jump out immediately. If we put the same frog in a pot of cold water and slowly increase the temperature, the frog will remain in the pot and get fried. Why? Because it got used to the slowly increasing temperature. It didn’t find anything alarming or wrong.
The entire #MeToo movement somehow tells me that this is exactly what has been going on in our society for a very long time. Things start really small and when left unchecked, grew into something big overtime but by then, everyone around was not so alarmed because all of us thought that this is how business gets done here and that there is nothing wrong or that we cant do much about it anyways.
And thankfully, we are not FROG’s. So, finally, the #MeToo movement has at least brought out one specific issue out into the open and metaphorically speaking, that frog has jumped out of the boiling pot before getting fried.
Where there was one, there ought to be more:
Where there was one such frog, I believe there will be many more. This is never one-dimensional as people are never one-dimensional. So, in every organization or industry where sexual misconduct was tolerated for whatever amount of time by the people running the organization, I strongly believe that there will be more such ills that are being tolerated as well.
In Conclusion:
It is now the responsibility of the leaders to ensure that they look for it with an intense focus and announce and practice zero tolerance for any unethical practice, however small or big.
Here is a short video that explains the concept that we are talking about – “Incrementalism”.
Let’s learn and put in practice a Zero Tolerance Policy against anything unethical or immoral!
