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problem solving
Why BP's engineers should take a break
One of the most enjoyable parts to many of our workshops is watching the reaction of people who fail to see a very obvious gorilla in a video clip because we told them to focus on counting basket balls being passed between two teams of players. I'm not going to link to the video, because more and more people have already seen it and it spoils our fun!
Unintended consequences
An article in the news today reported concern among AIDS organisations and Doctors without Borders about a worrying new trend where people are neglecting to take life-saving medication in order to qualify for government subsidies. In South Africa, the government pays a special disability grant to people living with HIV. The problem seems to be that there is no standard set of guidelines as to determining who qualifies for the subsidy and who doesn't. Some doctors are basing their recommendations in terms of who qualifies for the subsidy on the CD4 levels of the patients, i.e. to qualify for the subsidy, you need to stay sick or get worse. If you get better, i.e. your CD4 count improves; you no longer have access to the extra money from government. People need to re-apply for the subsidy every 6 months, so there seems to be a definite incentive to remain ill.
Although it's difficult for me to understand how someone would risk their life to receive a subsidy, I guess it becomes a moot point when that money is the only means I have to feed my family. It seems that short-sighted thinking on the part of doctors and government regulators are leading to some serious unintended consequences.
It reminds me of a story I heard recently while conducting research into the current state of mine health and safety in South Africa ...
How we see the problem
A father and son were travelling home from a rugby game late one night in the 1970s when the dad pulled the car onto the shoulder of the rural, desolate highway and asked his son to take over the driving. As hard as it was for him to admit, the father said his eyesight was failing him and he didn't think it safe for him to stay behind the wheel. So the son took over, and it didn't take him long to realize that his dad's eyesight wasn't the problem - it was the car's headlights that were fading.
In life, we have to stay focused on the things that matter most. As Mark Twain put it, "Plain clarity is better than ornate obscurity." For the father and son with the fading headlights, the most important thing became obvious: The road in front of them for that last 15 miles!
In today’s world we need to realize that the “headlights” we relied on have begun to fade, or have totally blown out! Do we realize this, and to what extent does our vision of the problems and the solutions we envisage become blurred unbeknownst to us?
This analogy also speaks to how we tend to jump to a conclusion that the problem must have a complex reason/solution i.e. I'm not seeing well, so it must be my eyesight going, as opposed to realizing that I need to check the car's headlights. And, that if that father only had others like him in the car, he probably wouldn't have found the real problem, he needed someone with a different perspective to see it.
