The Colors of Change

A surprising lesson about change.

Photo by Rodion Kutsaiev on Unsplash

When GE was the largest and most profitable company in the world, it could be surprisingly tight with money. One of my bosses commented one day, “We didn’t get to be a $100 billion company by spending wastefully.”

You can imagine my surprise when the company replaced our rather expensive and perfectly functional Black and White Sun Sparc Workstations with brand new workstations with color screens.

This was the era before inexpensive PCs, and UNIX-based workstations like these could cost as much as $20,000.

Every engineer on our team got a brand new color version.

A study found that when black and white workstation screens had been replaced by color, there was a 30% increase in productivity.

GE was all about productivity back then, heard about the study, and made the purchase.

We loved it. I was on my workstation eight hours a day, and the color and customizable screen made working on them more fun.

A year or so later, I read about a follow-up study. Researchers switched people back to the black and white screens, and guess what?

Productivity went up again!

It turns out the increase in productivity wasn’t the color at all; it was change. Making a noticeable change reset our interest and energy. Even the change back to black and white provided a similar boost in interest and focus.

Thankfully our bosses didn’t bring the old machines back.

Change like this doesn’t always require a $20,000 purchase, either. It can be as simple as moving things around.

That story has stuck with me and inspired me to look for opportunities in life to mix things up now and again.

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🌀 Reflection:

What lesson(s) do you take from the color monitor story?

Are there things you could change in your life that might spark new interest or novelty?

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