The Human Element: by Loran Nordgren and David Schonthal.
The Human Element: by Loran Nordgren and David Schonthal
The Human Element is a guidebook for introducing new ideas and successfully implementing these innovations, despite inevitable resistance. Nordgren and Schonthal use the metaphor of fuel and drag from airplane flights. Airplanes need fuel to fly, and The Human Element describes how most of us increase the fuel or advocate for change based on values. Just as an airplane needs to reduce drag to lift off the runaway, advocating for change also needs to address the four frictions that create drag. The four frictions include inertia (how large the change is), the implementation effort (how hard it is to change), reactance (is there pressure to change?), and emotion (the negative feelings that accompany change). Success, according to Nordgren, relies on identifying frictions “You’re like a detective. You’re analyzing the circumstance to understand the frictions operating against you. And once you identify those frictions, in many cases, the solutions become self-evident.”
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