I had a student visit my office hours recently looking for career advice — how to balance his academic pursuits with life as a student athlete. As he described his experience as a gymnast, it became clear that what he was actually doing was defying gravity — if only for a moment in time. When he jumps in the air, contorting and bending his body in mid-flight, he is essentially testing the boundaries of what's possible relative to the forces of gravity's pull.
Hours after our conversation, I found myself coming back to the idea of gravity. We all know gravity to be an invisible force that brings mass objects together — particularly, toward the center of the earth. It's a force that keeps your feet on the ground. In many ways, culture acts as a gravitational force that brings people together and keeps our ways grounded in the expectations of people like us. This is a powerful idea when we think about organizational culture.
When you enter a new organization for the first time, it's kind of like moonwalking. Not the Michael Jackson moonwalk where you slide backwards while appearing to be walking forward, but the moonwalk of astronauts that bounce up and down as they walk the moon's surface. With a gravitational pull about 1/6 that of the earth, astronauts feel lighter when they walk on the moon and, therefore, "bunny hop" as they traverse its surface. Likewise, when new employees start at an organization, the gravitational pull of its culture isn't as strong so they kind of bounce around finding their way. That's why new folks are so valuable — they can bring new perspectives to the table that have not yet been normalized. The gravity of the organization has not brought them down to the ground just yet, so they get to test the boundaries of what's possible, if only for a little while.
The social solidarity that comes from organizational culture helps get people on the same page, but it also prevents people from seeing things outside their shared peripheral vision. New perspectives give the organization an opportunity to see the world differently and potentially identify solutions that have historically resided within the organization's blindspot. This boon is especially felt with new senior leadership.
Consider Levi's, for example. The beloved denim brand was experiencing sluggish growth, so they brought in new leaders to moonwalk the gravitational forces of the company and inject fresh perspective. The result was a strategic pivot toward direct-to-consumer sales and a cultural resurgence of the brand, producing double-digit year-over-year revenue increases.
But here's the catch: after a while, the gravitational force of the environment pulls you back to earth. Like a gymnast who must constantly train and condition, leaders must also continue to broaden their perspective — through reading, continued education, or advisors. Leaders must simultaneously keep their feet on the ground (aligned with organizational culture) and in the air (exploring fresh possibilities), if they are to realize the benefit of moonwalking long after the newness wears off.