Why do some changes in our companies seem to expire well before their expected due date?
In a heart transplant, a surgeon doesn’t cut out a heart from one patient and simply sow it into the chest cavity of another. For if nothing else is done to help acclimate the transplanted organ into its new environment , there is a high risk of experiencing transplant rejection. This occurs when the body detects that the heart belongs to someone else. In response, it begins to rally the immune system to attack the foreign tissue. And if this happens, the rejected organ must be swiftly removed or the patient is at risk of dying.
To reduce the probability of having transplant rejection, surgeons must also focus on modifying the new environment that the heart finds itself swimming in. They do this by pumping the patient with medication that suppresses their immune system. It ultimately reduces the chance the body will detect that the transplanted organ is foreign. And it minimizes the immune system’s severity of attack as well.
In the same, when we begin to transplant our lives, jobs, and relationships into totally new environments, we can’t just assume that everything will work out just the same as it did before. For nothing in life exists in a perfect vacuum. Instead everything and everyone is deeply interconnected to a single dynamic ecosystem. One simple change in your life will fundamentally tip the balance of everything and everyone else that is connected with you. Therefore, a single change in your life, without tweaking and re-calibrating all the other related factors and variables in your environment, will often put that change at risk of immediate failure and rejection.
Since all of our lives are deeply interwoven with everything and everyone around us, are we willing to factor other people’s opinions and needs before we rush to transplant our next impending change?
