“I don’t get it,” Landon lamented. “Three of the team did it the way they were trained, two of them did it another way. In the meeting, they all agreed, described the method they were going to use. I wish I could figure out a way to understand why they say one thing and do another?”
“Let’s look at the facts,” I replied. “What is the difference between the three team members who followed the training, completed the task and the two team members who failed?”
“I don’t know,” Landon shook his head.
“For the three team members who followed the training, it was necessary,” I said. “For the other two team members, it wasn’t necessary.”
“What do you mean, necessary?” he asked. “I can’t chop off their fingers, though I could promise to yell at them.”
“As if yelling at someone, lecturing someone, writing up someone makes it necessary?” I observed. “Those are things on the outside. What makes for internal necessity? Tell me, Landon, what is something you do every day, that you aren’t particularly enthused about, but you do it anyway?”
Landon thought. “I brush my teeth. Not something I enjoy or pursue, but something I do every day.”
“Simple enough,” I agreed. “Why? Why do you do it every day. Why do you find it necessary to do every day?”
“Because I don’t want my teeth to rot out, obviously.”
“So every day, you imagine being 90 years old sporting a set of pearly white teeth?” I wanted to know.
Landon chuckled. “No, maybe that’s what my dentist tells me, but I do it, just because I do it.”
“Landon, you do it because it is necessary. It has become necessary, as a habit, you just do it. Habits are internal necessities that we repeat over and over. You would not think of skipping, because it has become necessary. When you look at your team, where do you see necessity? What is different about the three who did from the two who did not?”
