Kitchen renovation and understanding what to carry into the future
We’re renovating the kitchen at home.
It is quite an undertaking and the house is a mess.
While planning the renovation, one of my biggest concerns was removing the massive granite slabs that were there. I told my wife that we could leave the slabs as they were and work around with the rest of the space. But she had a very clear picture in her mind of what she wanted. In that version, the massive granite slabs had to go.
And last week, the massive granite slabs that have stood strong for 20 years were removed.
This entire exercise taught me about how we look at any sort of upheaval and the different ways to go about it.
a) Total upheaval — In order to have a completely new kitchen, there really was no place for the old. The change had to be full, which meant removing those massive granite slabs.
Sometimes, moving forward means unapologetically doing away with the old.
Many organisations, teams and governments fall into this trap while attempting to effect change. One of the hardest things to change in any place is the culture, especially if that is the one causing most of the problems. Culture is the foundation on which the future is built. Changing the culture means a total break from the past — old ways of working, redundant ways of treating people, and outdated methods of appraising and measuring productivity. The more time a certain kind of culture is honed, the harder it is to engineer a reversal. That is the equivalent of removing hard granite from our kitchen.
Once people realise that change will require a total break away from the past, they balk and go back to old ways.
An example of drastic upheaval is in how the Indian cricket team looks at fitness. For the most part, one never associated the Indian team with being super fit. It simply wasn’t a priority. Under Virat Kohli, there was a drastic change and fitness became one of the main barometers for selection. Look at the Indian cricket team 10 years back and see for yourself how many of them were super-fit. Look at the team now. This was possible because the captain insisted on drastically overhauling the importance that fitness was given.
b) Partial upheaval — If we wanted to, we could have preserved the granite slabs and worked around them, but that would have meant not doing a lot of the things that we wanted to do.
Partial change works when the foundation is strong and the culture is one of encouragement, support and decency. When those things exist, experimenting and failing aren’t frowned upon. This is why honing and encouraging a positive culture is critical. When the culture gives people the licence to experiment without fear of ridicule, it’s easier to keep up with change as there is no undercurrent of insecurity.
Change doesn’t always need to be drastic. We sometimes get caught up in grand proclamations and fall for the ‘all or nothing’ school of thought. If something has served you well, no point in reinventing the wheel.
An example of partial upheaval is from a restaurant near my house. When the restaurant was being built, there was a massive tree on the piece of land. The owner was very keen that the tree not be disturbed. They found a way to build around the tree and today, it’s one of the main attractions in the restaurant.
Whether moving forward requires complete or partial upheaval depends on how much of the past you want to carry into the future.
Is this culture/practice/habit worth taking into the future or is it costing me more than I care to admit?
That’s the question to ask when moving forward.
