Make the Wrong Thing Difficult

A young horse in the round pen drifts to the gate side. That is where he came in, and where he wants to leave.

Zachary does not chase him. He arranges the pen, and the horse walks himself into the open arc.

Ray Hunt said it in ten words. Make the wrong thing difficult and the right thing easy.

Difficult, not impossible. Then the answer becomes the horse's idea instead of yours.

Walk into any barn at dawn and you can read the leader by the aisle. Hay by the stalls it feeds. A painted square where the wheelbarrow lives.

Same crew, same morning. One barn makes them look bad. The other makes them look great.

Tom Dorrance once met a colt who would not give his feet. He asked nothing. He waited for the colt to shift his weight, and then lifted the light foot.

How did you do that? I asked when he was ready.

A sales team will not log their calls. The manager calls a meeting about data hygiene.

But the system takes forty seconds to load. Make it take three, and the hygiene fixes itself.

A parent has nagged about homework for three weeks. One afternoon she sets out the notebook, a pencil, a bowl of grapes, and sits down with a book of her own.

The boy sits down too. He was never lazy. He was waiting on someone to do the arranging.

The Army calls it mission command. Tell people what you are trying to accomplish and why. Not how.

Intent travels. Instructions die on contact.

When you find yourself giving the same instruction twice, stop giving the instruction.

Look at the environment. What am I about to make easy, and what am I about to make hard?

The right thing easy, the wrong thing difficult, never impossible. Read the leader by the aisle. Wait for the light foot. Fix the system, not the people. Intent travels.

Next: what to do when the horse won't try.