In physics, water follows the path of least resistance to the lowest point, where it stops. If you drop a cup of water on the ground, it will spill out and just kind of ooze. It won’t follow any pattern. It will just go, pulled by gravity until it reaches the lowest point where it stops.
It followed the path of least resistance to the lowest point where it stopped.
There is never an instance where this isn’t true. However, humans have harnessed this concept for centuries to do everything from grinding wheat and moving and milling logs to generating electricity and cutting steel and stone. But, you can also harness this principle for yourself and your team to do AMAZING things.
The Water Principle Applied
Biology talks about a concept called “energy conservation”. It says that just like water, people will do what it takes to reduce energy waste and increase efficiency so that they can use it when they really need it, like when they’re running from a bear, or dealing with an angry boss. In other words, people follow the path of least resistance to the lowest point where they will rest until they have to work.
When they generate electricity in a hydroelectric dam, they allow massive amounts of water to spin turbines and create power. Water is channeled and directed through sluices, gates, and pipes until it reaches the turbine, and then it leaves the dam. When they use water to cut steel, they channel it through a TINY nozzle at immense pressure. The hyper-concentrated point of water acts almost like a laser and is able to cut through the steel.
The Vision Defeats the OOZE
If you want to harness the water you need to channel, direct, and in some instances put it under pressure for a specific purpose. You can’t let it ooze. Your team needs a vision that will direct, inspire, and energize them and their efforts to do AMAZING things. The vision will also sustain the team when they meet resistance and drive them to cut through it like water through steel. But, it’s not the team’s job to develop the vision. As a business leader, owner, executive, manager, whatever that’s your responsibility.
The Pioneers of the Old West
There’s one group that highlights this better than the rest: The pioneers of the “old west”. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly referred to as “Mormons” are a great study. Joseph Smith officially organized the church in 1830. These early members believed that Jesus Christ had appeared to and called Joseph Smith as a prophet and was giving him revelations and the authority to restore Christ’s church to the Earth. As evidence, Jesus had sent an angel to lead Joseph Smith to a record of ancient American Christians. Jesus gave Smith the power and tools to translate the record, called the Book of Mormon.
Neighbors immediately persecuted the early Mormons and drove them from their homes in New York and Pennsylvania to Ohio and Missouri, who proved equally inhospitable. In Missouri, their eviction was particularly violent because the government issued an extermination order. Mormons are to date, the only group in United States history to have a state-issued extermination order.
The Mormons moved from Missouri and Ohio to Illinois. A mob murdered Joseph Smith in 1844. The Mormons were driven from Illinois too. By 1847 they had begun to cross the great plains to settle in what is now Utah. By 1868, when trains replaced wagons and handcards some 56,000 men, women, and children crossed the plains on foot.
Why Do It?
Why would they suffer all that persecution and difficulty, leave homes in the lush east and Europe to scratch out a living in the deserts and scrub-brush of Utah and to call it a “promised land”? The vision. They believed that Jesus had in fact restored His church and they were willing to sacrifice everything for it. While your vision may not require that much of your employees, it can energize and steel them just like these Mormon pioneers.
If you need help creating a vision that energizes you and your team, fill out our free “Promised Land Exercise”. We’ll guide you through creating a vision of your “promised land”. Enough waiting. It’s time to find your promised land and get you there.
