Growth: What Lobsters Can Teach Us About Change

Part 1: Lobsters

I’ve been working my way through the memoir Eat a Peach by David Chang – the James Beard award winner behind the Momofuku restaurant group. It’s an interesting read about restaurant culture, entrepreneurship, mental health, racism, and, of course – food. The other night I got to a section with a curious name and let’s just say, I didn’t expect to be writing a blog today about insights from a chapter entitled “Lobsters” - but here I am.

“Lobsters grow by molting,” Chang starts. “They shed their old shell to reveal a new, soft shell that will eventually harden around them… It takes a tremendous amount of energy and leaves them exposed and vulnerable while they’re in the middle of it.” This wasn’t new news to me; as a consumer of Eastern Shore soft crabs, I am familiar with this scientific marvel. It was what came next that got me thinking.

“Want to know the only sign that a lobster is dying? It stops molting.”

Boom.

I want to clarify that for the purpose of this blog, growth doesn’t mean expansion in size or services, though it could. This is more about internal growth, personal growth, changes in culture and/or process - molting. There is no shortage of articles and blogs out there about growing as people or organizations that offer up a myriad of reasons why we do or don’t continue to grow and what happens as a result. Two oft-mentioned reasons stand out for me. The first is that we think we are better than we really are or, as this article in Entrepreneur calls it, the Lake Wobegon effect. The other, directly related to the first, is we stop listening. I.e., if we think we’ve got it all figured out, we must not be seeking feedback from our friends, our teams, or our communities.

I’m going to guess that lobsters probably don’t look forward to going through this molting process – it is difficult, tiring, and dangerous. But I suppose it beats the alternative. Unlike with the molting lobster, failing to grow as a person or an organization is a choice. We can wake up every day and choose to be complacent, choose to be content with maintaining the status quo, choose not to learn or seek improvement. Or, we can approach every day as an opportunity to choose to seek feedback, choose to self-reflect, choose to put in the work to be better.

Having spent the last 6 years walking alongside hundreds of people and organizations as they navigate growth and change all while navigating our own growth here at The Spark Mill, I know how difficult and uncomfortable it can be. I definitely have days when I just don’t feel like I have the energy to grow or reflect. Sometimes it feels like just getting through the day is all I have to give. Maybe that is okay. Maybe the next day I will remember the lobsters because pushing through the pain sure beats the alternative.