e In A Mythic Life (1996), Jean Houston recalls what she learned from Margaret Mead: “…it was important to challenge people at odd moments and in unlikely situations. That, she said, would throw them off base and get them moving and thinking again.’”
Charles Handy, a British writer and consultant on organizational and management issues, writes that in our work lives some of us are elephants—moving steadily up the hierarchy to positions of weighty power—while others are fleas, small and quick, living on the edges, and continually bothering the elephant to keep moving.
Both are needed and both need each other.
I usually think of myself as most comfortable as a flea living at the margins and nipping at the elephant asking questions, posing possibilities, challenging status quo assumptions and, hopefully, keeping the elephant alert. There are times when I lean toward being stable and careful about moving, like an elephant.
Better not to be stuck as one or the other but flexible and strategic in a given situation.
Elephant or flea? What are you?