If only I could repeal the law of gravity! Part of growing up was outgrowing such silliness once and for all, I later thought. There are laws of nature, and we need to learn how to work with them instead of merely hoping they'll go away.

Now that I'm a bit older, I observe that many of us still have the same desires, at least sometimes. No, few of us want to fly imaginary rocket ships to the ceiling and back, but we do want our organizations to do what we want, when we want, and with as little effort as we want. In Barry Richmond's terms, we want to "fight the physics" of the organization.

Barry used the term "physics" to describe those "laws" which describe how parts of a system work. For example, you may plan to increase your capacity to serve customers by adding new people. You have to recruit, hire, and train those people to get new employees, and you'll get little added benefit during the time you're involved in those activities. In fact, you may suffer as experienced employees spend some of their valuable time recruiting, hiring, and training new hires rather than serving customers.

"Fighting the physics" is what we do when we ignore any or all of the ramifications of such a system and try to get what we want without paying the price, without letting the system work as it will. Barry's message? We'll lose!

We also fight the physics when we want our employees, our customers and, yes, our friends and relatives to do as we wish without doing (or being) what it takes to have that happen.

"That's interesting," you may think, "but what's the lesson for me?" Think about the physics of the system you're working in, the system you're trying to "fix." What are the immutable relationships and delays you can't overcome? Where are the effective leverage points to effect change? What unintended consequences might arise from your actions? Are there any laws of organizational physics you're refusing to acknowledge?