Here’s a message I received from Tracy Fortune, an Office Manager/EMR Coordinator at a cardiology practice. I met her after a recent keynote I gave in Michigan:
Steve,
I really enjoy your email messages. I thought of you when I received this funny email. Enjoy!
Are you dumber than a pre-schooler? Which way is the bus below traveling? To the left or to the right?
Brian Christiansen wrote:
Last weekend I bought two bikes to donate to needy kids in the Appalachian Mountains. I took my son to Toys R Us to get the bikes. I decided to save the $20 and assemble the bikes myself instead of having it done at the store.
While assembling the first bike, I noticed how "idiot proof" the assembly of a commodity bicycle from Toys R Us is. Everything is labeled. In particular, there’s a big red "R" on the right bicycle pedal for the right hand side, and a big "L" on the left.
The right pedal twisted on perfectly on the right side. However, the threads on the left side refused to "take". I literally spent 10 minutes trying to twist the left pedal onto the crank of the bike. I was so frustrated I stopped working on the pedal and finished the rest of the assembly, that way when I brought it back to Toys R Us as defective they’d give me one of their assembled bikes in exchange and I wouldn’t have to do it again.
During this time, my son was playing outside. He had offered to help me about 17 times and I had him throw away packaging, kick down the kickstand, putting on the pads, etc. By the time I was putting the pedals on and struggling my son had moved on to other tasks since I was IN NO MOOD to talk much.
He came up to me and asked, "sure I can’t help?"…I paused for a moment, and decided, "what the heck"….I asked my son Connor to put the left pedal on. I imagined he’d stay quite occupied and "out of my hair" while I started on the second bike.
The great thing about kids is they have less assumptions than we do. It took Connor about 12 seconds to get the pedal on. You see, when he couldn’t get the pedal to screw in by following, "righty tighty" (i.e., screwing clockwise), he simply tried the other direction, or "lefty loosey". The pedal twisted in like butter. The commodity bicycle makers go so far to ensure the pedals are on the correct side that they reversed the threads for the left pedal… amazing…
I’d like to think my Bedwell training of stepping back and taking a fresh perspective was the reason I asked my son to take a crack at it. I know that part of me was just trying to get him out of my hair. But the sheer joy on my 7 year olds face that he helped his Dad do something he couldn’t do was priceless and solidified my commitment to looking at things from a "counterintuitive" perspective.
Sandra sent me this message last week:
We just met recently in Wilmington, Delaware at the DMGMA Gala. I wanted to call your attention to an article in the NY Times yesterday. Called "Diet and Fat: A Severe Case of Mistaken Consensus," it discusses how we are easily persuaded by the force of other personalities and the feeling that others may know more than we do…a dangerous assumption. This is a classic case where the media can take up a point of view that is just one aspect of an issue and entire national medical treatment regimens and recommendations as well as government policies are the result. You can find this article in the listing of most emailed articles from October 9th. See what you think.
[Note from Steve, here's the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/09/science/09tier.html]
I enjoyed your presentation very much. It would be interesting if you could put together some kind of exercise to appear in your online messages and/or for your presentations that test assumptions people hold. Just a thought.
Sandra
During my keynote I ask the question: "Think back to the last time you had an unexpectedly long wait before someone returned a phone call. In which direction did your interpretation of the delay naturally tend to go; positive or negative?" This question is always met with a chorus of "Negative".
According to Syracuse professor Kristin Byron one situation in which we are likely to "assume the worst" is in our interpretation of emails. In her paper ‘Carrying Too Heavy A Load’ (due to appear in the ‘Academy of Management Review’) she points out that "people perceive emails as more negative than they are intended to be". This leads to misinterpretation, confusion and conflict.
What’s the solution? More on A Simple Way To Reduce Your Stress
Seeing General Motors back in the news - with yet more strife between workers and management - reminded me of a classic case study into the risks of hidden assumptions.
In the early 70s, Peter O’Toole (professor of management at the University of Southern California) studied GM’s management and was able to identify a number of hidden assumptions that were crippling GM’s success. While these assumptions are outdated - although, in hindsight, still amusing - they serve as a reminder that hidden assumptions can be accidents waiting to happen. My two favorites are:
As we peer through the retrospectoscope and smugly ask: What were they thinking? It’s worth pausing to consider if we’re operating under any potentially catastrophic hidden assumptions. More on Are Assumptions Crippling Your Success?
Earlier this year a life-changing study was published in ‘Child Development’. It should have been brought to the attention of every parent and grandparent. Its implications are immense for the academic progress and long-term success of every child in the country.
As America’s children return to school, I want to ensure that my Perspective Power People are both aware of, and able to take effective action, based on the findings of this important research. More on How To Improve Your Child’s Academic Performance
I was sad to read in Time magazine this week of the passing of Albert Ellis. Just last month I heard him described as the "most influential psychologist alive today;" sadly no more.
He’ll be remembered for his Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, (previously called Rational Emotive Therapy, updated in the early nineties). More on The Passing Of Albert Ellis
So tomorrow is the ‘big’ day. The iPhone will be launched, blah, blah…
During a recent ‘product placement’ segment, a TV news anchor asked: “There’s rumors that, when the iPhone is released, there won’t be enough to go around. What can we possibly do?” In a rare moment of TV news sanity a reporter replied: “Well, one option is simply to wait a week or two.” Excellent point! In the time it takes to get the thing out of the box (almost) the iPhone will be freely available in the shops! More on iPhone, The Lesson To Be Learned
