Change Insights

The old story goes that a world-weary professor silently walks into his lecture theatre with a large glass jar, and starts filling it with rocks. Once he has done this, he asks the class – “Is the jar full?”. The students see that the rocks have reached the top of the jar and respond – “Yes”.

The professor then produces a bag of pebbles and commences to pour it into the jar. The pebbles neatly fill the gaps between the rocks. Once again the professor asks – “Is the jar full?”, and once again the class responds – “Yes”.

Next he produces a bag of sand and pours it into the jar. As he pours, the sand settles into the spaces between the rocks and the pebbles, until the entire bag has been consumed by the jar. One final time the professor asks – “Is the jar full?”, and once again the students dutifully respond – “Yes”.

Each time, the students thought the jar was full, and each time, the professor was able to add more into it, because he had a plan.

The point of the story is this…

Start with the big stuff.

If he had started with the sand first, he would never have got the rocks in.

And so it is with business.

Take a step back. Work out what is really important for you and your business to achieve over the next year (or two years, or five years). These are the big strategic pieces of work that will involve significant planning, and will generate significant change. Get these elements in and planned first. They may be difficult – in fact they will be difficult – but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t start planning to tackle them.

Once the rocks are in place, move on downwards to the pebbles – these are your smaller projects which complement the ‘rocks’. They keep the business moving forwards, and address tactical challenges that any business inevitably faces.

And once the rocks and the pebbles are in place, get started. The ‘sand’ – that is, the trouble-shooting, fire-fighting and general day-to-day stresses – will appear all on its own.

Without this kind of planning, you’ll end up filling your jar with sand. Fire-fighting ad-hoc emergencies, dealing with every mundane day-to-day request and burning energy just staying still. And that means you’ll never tackle the big meaty challenges that could really bring a quantum leap of positive change to your business.

Remember – a jar filled with sand has no room for rocks.