Have you ever read the book Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson? It describes four reactions to change in one’s work and life, through the adventures of two mice and two "little folk," during their hunt for "cheese."
As a Building Performance Specialist in an innovation company, I am tasked with bringing new and sometimes potentially groundbreaking ideas to homebuilders to improve their homes’ performance and reduce the builder’s risk and liability.
In presenting ideas for improvement and assisting production homebuilders in building better homes, a common mantra that I hear is, “I have done it this way for 30 years… why should I do it differently?” Change is no doubt difficult, but in today’s world of climate change and the need for energy efficiency, change is inevitable.
One such example is the location of supply registers in the ceilings of a typical home. For many years, it was common practice to install registers along exterior walls in front of windows. In colder climates, you needed to “wash” the windows with conditioned air to avoid condensation, and in warmer climates, you needed to minimize the heat gain from windows. This practice was relevant when homes and windows were not as energy efficient as they are today. Now, homes are built tighter and windows are significantly more energy efficient, which allows for supply registers to be located closer to interior walls; affording benefits such as shorter branch runs, faster installation, better room air circulation, and less resistance to the air handler which will extend the life of the equipment… not to mention cost savings. Slowly, the industry is coming around to this new approach to HVAC design but there are still those who refuse to change, especially if they are currently not experiencing comfort issues with doing things “the old way.”
In contrast, look how far plumbing supply material and installation methods have come. Copper was the standard for decades and the thought of moving to plastic piping was absurd. However today, homebuilders are increasingly using plastic piping, such as PEX (cross-linked polyethylene), instead of copper piping and reaping benefits such as cost effectiveness, ease of installation, corrosion resistance, reduced noise, fewer fittings and connections, thermal efficiency, and health benefits.
In this world we live in, change is inevitable, and we must learn to adapt. While it is difficult to leave our “comfort zone,” experience shows that without leaving the seashore, we will never discover new oceans. Or, as Sniff, Scurry, Hem and Haw discover in Who Moved My Cheese, “What you are afraid of is never as bad as what you imagine.”