Nick Arnett in LO19106 asked for a source of
> "In an avalanche,
> each snowflake will claim its innocence."
And I don't have one.
But in presenting in Hong Kong a few years ago, and having had previous
difficulties with the metaphor of a "tire chain," (another snow
metaphor!), I came up with:
"In a flashflood, each raindrop will claim its innocence."
Same principle, methinks.
I've never seen the "avalanche" quote cited - maybe something from
Readers' Digest that bubbled up from deep recesses during a time of
stress? Have to do a search on it one of these days.
But I REALLY loved Nick's next comment:
>It's a great quote, since avalanches are examples
>of self-organizing criticality.
Methinks this avalance metaphor can flow downhill from here, with lots of
links and one-liners to chaos theory, systems thinking, organizational
change and the like. Do you know how many different types of avalanches
there are? And types of snow? We shoot explosive shells at them to
control them.
And I'll bet there are even a few people who would play in one as an
"extreme sport."
Any takers?
--For the FUN of It!
Scott Simmerman, Ph.D. Performance Management Company - 800-659-1466 mailto:SquareWheels@compuserve.com
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