Do You Work for a Hopscotch Organization?

You probably remember the playground game hopscotch. I think there are some parallels between the game and working in many organizations.

Let’s say you have a simple task to do – you need to get from one side of a room to the other. In a hopscotch organization, you don’t simply walk across the room; you have to hop in a series of boxes in the proper sequence. For example:

Here’s a link to a video which shows the game in action.

Obviously, this is more complicated than simply doing the task. If you can, it makes sense to work on process improvements to simplify hopscotch procedures whenever you encounter them. But what if you can’t?

If my job was nothing but one hopscotch task after another, I think I would probably end up feeling the company was too stupid to be associated with, and would leave.

But, it’s more likely that hopscotch tasks are occasional irritants. If that’s the case, view them like hopscotch - a game you can excel at. Kids, after all, play hopscotch for fun, and a good hopscotch player can cross the course faster than most people can walk it. By all means work to change the game, but in the meantime learn to play, and take pleasure in the challenge.