Stumps

Social status has long been an institution in Mississippi. When I tell people that I was born on a farm in Mississippi some think that my family owned a cotton plantation. When I was growing up, social status was assigned to farmers according to the number of acres that they owned.

Both sides of family were very small farmers meaning they owned less than a hundred acres, and they worked the land themselves to earn a living. My mother’s family did not even own a tractor to plow the land. My dad’s father owned an International Cub tractor. In post-World War II this small tractor was billed as the replacement for the mule on the American farm.

Both of these families lived in Carroll County, Mississippi, which was (and still is) one of the poorest counties in the state, and the state was the poorest in the nation, so that tells you a lot about my roots!

While growing up in rural Mississippi I spent a lot of time on my grandmother’s farm. Two of my uncles lived with her and took care of the farm.

My mother’s family used mules to plow the fields, and my uncles taught me to use the mules to pull a wooden sled. I wasn’t big enough to handle the plow with two big mules, but I spent a lot of time in the fields watching my uncles work so I could learn more about how to handle the mule-driven sled. I learned the “gee haw” language of commands for the mules.

There were many tree stumps in fields where my family planted corn and cotton, and with no machinery to get them out of the ground, these stumps were left to rot in the fields. In a newly planted field these stumps stood out as they towered above the plowed ground. One would think that they received no attention.

However, I watched my uncles as they plowed the rows between the tender young plants. As they passed a stump with the mule-driven plow, they would barely nick the edge of the stump with the tip of the plow. The harnesses on the mules would snap on the sweat-laden shoulders of the mules as the sharp tip of the iron struck the stump. A small portion of the stump would be chipped away. Every time they passed a stump, they did the same thing.

Although these stumps held on to the earth around them long after their productive life had ended, they were not serving any purpose for producing corn. They stood out in the field—literally and figuratively—and I knew that my uncles were plotting all year long on how to get rid of those stumps.

In my leadership experience I have often dealt with “stumps.” These stumps were people who were opposed to change.

Statistics have shown that whenever change in the workplace culture is initiated, 20% of the people affected are eager to accept the expected changes. Those who are resistant to the changes comprise about 30% of the workers, and the remaining 50% are astride the fence—neither eager for the changes or adamantly opposed to the changes. If you were the leader, with whom would you work the hardest? Certainly not the 20% because they are ready to follow you in implementing the changes. So, would invest the most time in the 50% or the 30%?

Hands down, I would always work the hardest with the 50% attempting to get them on board with the proposed transformations. Many leaders would choose to spend a lot of time working with the naysayers, but my philosophy is different. The lower hanging fruits are those in the middle, so I would invest more time in them to get them on board.

For sure I would not forget about the 30%, but, in reality, they are the “stumps.” I would “nick” (more appropriately “nudge”) them from time to time to give them some attention and try to point them to their colleagues who were accepting the changes as being positive for the mission of the organization. In time some of these stumps would actually become advocates for the restructuring and repositioning.

Over a period of time the stumps in the field would go away. The nicking of the plow would help, but in the end the stump was not going to go away quickly. My uncles resolved to work around the stumps—not ignoring them and not making them the center of their attention.

People are the same: eventually, the naysayers (the 30%) will fade away either because they don’t have any more life energy or no one pays any attention to them anymore or they finally come around to realizing that change is imminent.

If we never change, then we die. I saw something once that went like this: do not fight the old but build the new.