When faced with information that contradicts our understanding of the way things are supposed to be, we revert back to what we already know, claiming disbelief in the rightness of what we're seeing and failing to examine the situation in order to develop a new understanding. We are told to follow the rules, even if we don't understand them, and we insist on following the rules even when it is pointed out that those rules were based on false assumptions.
My 6-year-old son has show-and-tell at school every Friday. The night before his most recent presetation, I asked him what he wanted to bring to school. He simply said, “Hmmm….I don’t know!” and shrugged his shoulders, waiting for me to give him something he could use. It was then that my improvement genes went into hyperdrive, not to mention my parenting genes, too. “Well, let’s just come up with some ideas.” I told him. “You know, just some brainstorming.” “Umm…geee, I – I really just can’t think of anything.” “Really??” I said, “you have no thoughts at all??” “Well,...
I was out hiking with my 6-year-old son this weekend at Beaver Brook in Hollis, NH. It was a perfect fall day to be out, and we walked well into the woods and around the pond on a 2 ½ hour trek. While we were out, we learned a few lessons about finding the fascinating in both the unusual, and the ordinary.
Everyone likes to show off their ability to put their backs into it and come out a winner. In the end, it's all about "Look at me! I am tough, and I can take it." But why do you want to? Any number of organizations have figured out that no one should have to, or want to. From Toyota and its fabled Production System to Best Buy and the Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE), there are places that have realized that overcoming the "Look what I can do!" aspects of human nature.
“Do what you can with what you’ve got wherever you are.” Theodore Roosevelt Those words got me thinking about people who will state that they can’t accomplish something for no reason other than, “I don’t know how.” Ummmm……what? The truth is that the statement is incomplete. The person doesn’t know how to do the task, certainly, but what’s really at issue is that what’s required for the task is a lack of knowledge today. So, all that’s required is a bit of simple curiosity in order to create some ideas as to how the task could be done. It’s important...
The other night while I was watching TV I saw this Geico commercial. I thought this was very funny. The commercial is funny because it is ludicrous. We would never consider this a viable option. We want a human to interact with our children so they can adjust to their needs and solve problems that come up throughout the day. We value having the mind that is attached to the hands and feet of the daycare workers. So, why don’t we value the minds attached to hands and feet in a manufacturing environment?
I’m spending a lot of time talking to myself these days. And no, while the ins and outs of daily life sometimes make me crazy, I’m not quite losing it just yet. Thanks to the recent purchase of a smart phone, I found a pre-installed voice recorder app. So, while I am driving to and fro, I find myself firing up the voice recorder and emptying out my thoughts on a variety of topics. Most of them lead to blog posts or are sewing the seeds for other writings. The practice has 2 benefits – I don’t have to...
I came across this speech, delivered in June of 2010 by Erica Goldson, Valedictorian of her class at Coxsackie-Athens HS: The full text of the speech can be found on Erica’s blog. This passage, to my mind, is the most telling: I am graduating. I should look at this as a positive experience, especially being at the top of my class. However, in retrospect, I cannot say that I am any more intelligent than my peers. I can attest that I am only the best at doing what I am told and working the system. Yet, here...
I am frequently reminded of some old Star Trek: The Next Generation episode whenever I hear or see someone who is failing, over and over again. The episode dealth with Commander Data, the cybernetic organism that worked so dilgently to understand human life. He was pitted against some grand master in a game that looked like 3 dimensional chess. When he first played the master, Data lost in spectacular fashion. In a later attempt, however, he prevailed. The secret to his success? “I simply changed my premise. I realized I didn’t have to beat him, I just had to...
It’s hard coming up with new ideas all the time. Ask any writer, or painter, a musician or even an engineer. Anyone who has to come up with something new often enough will eventually encounter blockage. There are exercises and writing prompts, little tricks that people use to get themselves going – some even don’t bother and just accept it, waiting for those waves of creativity to ignite a spark, and then they dump their entire heart and mind out as much as possible. I admit, I often sit down to write something for this blog, and nothing comes. ...
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