Patterns & Metaphors
Conferencing inertia
Template:
Inertia is the force of inaction. It is the tendency of a group of individuals or organizations to avoid change and to continue on with more of the same. It is the difficulty of a large system to re-act to new stimuli, new ideas and new challenges.
[Advantages] Protection against opportunistic and rash activity. Inertia is a force that can demand the utmost creativity from the change-agent who must seek out and exert pressure on the sensitive nodes in the system.
[Disadvantages] It appears to make evolutionary organic change impossible, demanding rather, that an equal force and mass be exerted in a wasteful destructive and cataclysmic clash. If the sensitive pressure point cannot be reached, inertia can be very costly in terms of discouragement - without being anyone's fault.
