Habits refer to actions taken by people repeatedly without thinking. Habits that are developed over the years get ingrained in one's behaviour. People with habits do not assess the purpose and benefits of their actions any more. They will continue to do things the same way without question.
In fact, they have substituted the need to think with the habit they developed.
A story was told of ancient Egypt whereby a great conqueror came and took over the country. The first thing he did was to burn all the libraries. He did this perhaps out of insecurity as he did not want any man to be wiser than him. All the books of wisdom were burnt.
However, there was one book that was left unburnt. A man went through the ruins of the library and found this book, The Magic Of Touchstone.
It described the secret of great wealth. It said: " Go to any beach in the country and should you find any pebble that feels warm; there lies all the pebbles below that will turn into gold."
The curious man believed what he read. So he set out to find the gold.
Each day he would go to a beach and pick up a pebble; it would feel cold and he would throw it into the sea. He went through this repeated motions countless times.
He did this for years. After 10 years, he stumbled upon a beach and he picked up a pebble. It felt warm, but he threw it into the sea and continued his search. It had become a habit for him to pick up pebble and throw it into the sea.
After so many repeated actions, he had forgotten the goal of his search.
Many executives are like this man. They continue to do thing the old way, which are not productive, but their habits prevent them from changing.
Article from: Victor S L Tan, KL Strategic Consultant (Mindset – bacha )
p/s: Victor S L Tan, an international consultant & authority on change management, (KL Strategic Consulting) wrote this articles and the author of 4 books, mostly on guide to management. His articles appeared twice weekly in the NST in the mid 90’s. Back then, I was working at a small district, where due to my new nature of work, I really needed to transform from my old self to a new self, sort of a paradigm shift for me. I have to get something to make that change. I kept his newspaper clippings and I would read them over and over. I would say that they helped me a lot in my work on building interpersonal relationships and created a good networking with people around me, (which I lacked at then) not only at workplace but also in my daily life. It builds my confidence, it increases my endurance and I managed to create a good working atmosphere with people around me, with my bosses, colleagues, staffs and friends. It sure made me a better person.
Till nearly my retirement time, a junior colleague asked if she could have those paper clippings...and i gladly passed them over to her .. as i know that she too would have enjoyed reading them and instilling the ideas....
