What do pants have to do with change?
Posted on: August 6, 2012
Something funny happened in my MLS125 class last week.
The group that was facilitating the topic of articulating change with ICT presented a Wordle to illustrate the dominant words used in survey they conducted of the class. This is what it looked like.
When I asked why “pants” was such a dominant word, I was reminded that I had mentioned it in the previous session.
The previous session’s topic was planning for change. During a discussion, someone mentioned the need to plan for some way to transmit the urgency of change.
Off the cuff, I mentioned that merely trying to do this was like peeing in your pants. The pee is like the urgency for change: Everyone can see the urgency, but only you (as the agent of change) can feel it.
It seemed like that statement left an indelible mark on some minds. If I thought more quickly, I could have mentioned that was an example of articulation over mere communication because the former resonates with an audience. I made this point in our Edmodo space.
As it turned out, the dominance of “pants” was an accident. When I had access to the Google Spreadsheet that resulted from the form, I noticed that one person’s entry was somehow recorded a few times.
It was a timely reminder to not phrase things in absolute terms when online and to not just judge a product at face value. I can be absolutely sure of that!
