The Choluteca Bridge is a nearly indestructable bridge comissioned by the Honduran government to cross the Choluteca rivier. In the year it was completed, Hurricane Mitch flooded the area and the river forged a new course, leaving a bridge over nothing, heading nowhere. Summary by The World of Work Project
The Choluteca Bridge
Hondurus experiences a lot of significant storms, rainfall and associated flooding. Historically, this has damaged a lot of infrastructure in the country, including bridges and transport routes.
Given this context, the Honduran government decided that, for a key bridge over the Cuoluteca river, it would be worth investing in excellent design and construction so as to create a nearly in-destructable bridge. They comissioned the Japanese company Hazama Ando to build the bridge, and it was completed in 1998.
Later that year, Hurricane Mitch struck Hondurus, resulting in huge flooding and damage. The new bridge survived and was nearly undamaged.
When things settled down, though, it became clear that not only had the roads either side of the bridge been destroyed, but the river itself had burst its banks and carved a new bed for itself.
The result was a lovely bridge, over no river, connected to nothing.
The spanish language youtube video below has some nice images of it.
Why do we care?
There are lessons in this for many of us.
If we hold out posititions too strongly, we may find they do not serve us well, particularly if the world around us changes.
At times, being adaptive and flexible, changing in response to the world is the best thing to do in life for ourselves, and for others.
As people, doing so can help our wellbeing and mental health and improve our relationships. For organziations, adapting as the world around us changes can be essential for our ongoiung success and survival.
Learning More
Personal growth and change are important in work and in wider life. A lot of this starts with self awareness. We quite like the Bridges model as a tool in this space.
It might be interesting to listen to the podcast on psychological flexibility too.
The World of Work Project View
So, the way we use this is to tell people the story of the bridge and then ask them what they take away from the story in terms of reflections / insights for themselves or their organization.
We think it’s a lovely little provocation to bring the concept of flexibility and adapatability to live for people, it’s something they can really connect with. The nice visuals help as well.
From our perspective, being able to hold your beliefs and positions lightly and respond as the world around you changes is a great thing to do. Both from an operational perspective and a personal perspective. Sometimes being resolute and indestructable is great, but sometimes it leaves you alone in the wrong field, looking a bit silly. Perhaps the real challenge comes in knowing which times are the right times to flex.
How We Help Organizations
We provide leadership development programmes and consulting services to clients around the world to help them become high performing organizations that are great places to work. We receive great feedback, build meaningful and lasting relationships and provide reduced cost services where price is a barrier.
Learning more about who we are and what we do it easy: To hear from us, please join our mailing list. To ask about how we can help you or your organization, please contact us. To explore topics we care about, listen to our podcast. To attend a free seminar, please check out our eventbrite page.
We’re also considering creating a community for people interested in improving the world of work. If you’d like to be part of it, please contact us.
Sources and Feedback
We’re not sure exactly how this migrated into the world of coaching and development, but we first came across is from an excellent coach who we are friends with, Simon Bold.
We’re a small organization who know we make mistakes and want to improve them. Please contact us with any feedback you have on this post. We’ll usually reply within 72 hours.
