Massive change

I got this article in a Fast Company email today. It's based on a 2001 article, and I think I've read it before. If you've read Good to Great, by Jim Collins, you've probably heard it too. The book is still waiting in my bookcase, but it's moved up a notch in my list of things todo.

How Change doesn't happen

"Picture an egg. Day after day, it sits there. No one pays attention to it. No one notices it. Certainly no one takes a picture of it or puts it on the cover of a celebrity-focused business magazine. Then one day, the shell cracks and out jumps a chicken.

All of a sudden, the major magazines and newspapers jump on the story: 'Stunning Turnaround at Egg!' and 'The Chick Who Led the Breakthrough at Egg!' From the outside, the story always reads like an overnight sensation -- as if the egg had suddenly and radically altered itself into a chicken."

In a sense, that's metamorphosis.

I chose the name of this blog because of my background with bugs (entomology). Metamorphosis is where an insect, for example a caterpillar, changes into a moth or butterfly. The metaphor seemed appropriate.

The chick in the egg scenario works for me too. Massive change into a different form.

That's what I feel I'm doing right now. I don't expect to be an overnight sensation, nor the subject of major magazines and newspapers, but the change in my life has been huge.

In the space of a year, I've gone from a full-time bureaucrat in the public service, managing staff, facilities, and programs, to a solopreneur offering freelance services out of my little office . I didn't realize how much of a change it would be.

Well trust me. Massive change.

But it's been good. I've had a chance to explore a lot of things that I just didn't have time for before, and I'm learning a lot. Perhaps I'll document some of those changes here as I go along.

Sooner or later we all face some kind of metamorphosis. With the right attitude it's a positive experience overall. It just takes time.

I wonder when I'll break out of the egg ;-)