Stopping the Drift

^{Originally published in The Way on May 17, 1941.}

In the midst of our organizational ranks recently I saw an enterprise launched which others thought impossible. These efforts were met with ridicule and laughter. This whole situation made me think.

We are complaining that our organizational life is drifting. Why do we complain? Are we not bound to drift if we do nothing ourselves and laugh at those who attempt to do something? Our life is suffering not so much from bad design as from drift. Our urgent need is for people who can and will stop the drift, who will take charge, who will try, who, instead of accepting circumstances and waiting for the “inevitable” will control events to a desired result.

Most of us have seen, perhaps with a thrill of admiration, people who can help while others feel helpless, people who when they see things drifting to loss or futility or failure can cheerfully take on the task of steering the situation to success. These people never were those to laugh while others tried. They were triers themselves. That is where and how they got their ability.

Superficially there may be something amusing in the sight of someone trying and perhaps failing time after time. There are psychologists who would say that the sense of superiority is fallacious and the laughter is foolish, for when a person is trying you never know the moment he may succeed and then the laughter will be on the other side.

In our ranks we should have a healthy respect for any person who tries. We should like best those who try most. We should even be tolerant of mistakes and failures, but not when they come from half hearted execution of instructions, but when they come from a determination to do something new, to save the situation.

The trier has always been valuable. In these days when half of us seem to be hypnotizing ourselves into helplessness, the trier is more than ever the person we want to choose for our companion. The men and women who try are the steam in the engine, the vitality of an organism — and these days our life is short of driving power and dynamic force. That is why we are drifting. The trier is never permanently kept out of success.

Results do not often come by drift. The person who sits waiting for the tide of events to bring success to his door, will wait in vain. He who would achieve must try. Sometimes he will fail, but the failure of the person who tries is a victory compared with the idleness of the drifter.

Are we interested in stopping the drift in our organizational life? If so, let us not laugh at the triers but become triers ourselves or at least lend encouragement to those already trying to do something.