The Wet Blackboard and Chalk Theory

Who doesn't remember the blackboard?

The blackboard and the grinding noise of the chalk crawling across it, earliest and indelible memories, right out of one’s childhood.

But, we aren't talking of schooldays or even one’s childhood for that matter. We are talking something substantially concerning, something serious.

You, me, us – we all have come across pages, chapters and episodes in life. We remember some. We forget the rest. Of the ones we remember, we often tend to overlook the minor ones, which seemingly had negligible or no relevance at all.

A classic example of this phenomenon is “the wet blackboard and chalk theory”.

It often happened during the childhood days; the blackboard was wiped off with a wet cloth only to be left clean and shining, flawless and smooth, as if not a word had ever been scribbled on it.

It was perfect.

It was perfect, only until the next words had been chalked on.

Once the board was written all over, did rise the actual problem. Remembered something! Didn't you?

The first words chalked on the wet blackboard were too stubborn to be dusted off. Even after the duster had been rubbed the hardest, they would leave behind a negligible but not non-existent trail.

Slowly but steadily, over the next few hours the trail would only grow all the more prominent. By the end of the day, it would be nearly impossible to decipher anything that was there on the board.

And, wet cloth wasn’t a real solution!

Soon after the first layer of words left their trail, every single layer kept adding negligible but not non-existent trails, rendering the blackboard unproductive by the end of the day. Slowly. But, steadily.

Employees lacking motivation are to an organisation what a fragile piece of chalk is to a wet blackboard. 

The trails are negligible. But, not non-existent. Fractions add up to whole numbers quite much like drops add up to seas and oceans.