In my early teen years, my family took advantage of an opportunity and moved from southern Ohio all the way to a residential village in Brazil. Up until that point, it had never occurred to me that two people looking at the exact same problem would imagine completely different solutions. I guess I led a sheltered life. I heard a story there that showed me just how much a person's experiences and thinking process affects the solutions they come up with.
One of the American families living in the village with us had a problem with the bathroom in their home. Whenever anyone in the house would take a shower, water would remain all the way around the outside edges of the shower stall. Thinking like an American, I thought the obvious solution to the problem was to chip up the concrete to lower the drain and re-tile the bottom of the shower wherever it had been torn up.
A Brazilian worker was hired to solve this problem. The lady of the house went out on some errands, leaving the worker to do his thing. When she returned, there was a puddle of water on her front porch. She didn't think much of it, since it was a tropical area and rain storms occurred occasionally. When she stepped in the door, however, she immediately knew something was wrong. The rug on her hardwood floor in the living room was soaked, and it squished when she walked on it.
It seems that the worker, thinking like someone who had little money, couldn't justify tearing up all that tile and concrete, etc., came up with a solution that seemed perfectly logical to him. He used a chisel and chiseled a little trench out of the shower stall, across the bathroom floor, down the hardwood floor in the hallway, across the living room, and out the front door. This was certainly NOT the solution the resident of that house was looking for, and was not acceptable for them, but if you look at things from the worker's point of view, it was the simplest, cheapest solution that got rid of the water standing in the shower stall.
Hearing that story was something of an epiphany for me. Until then, I never realized how much our point of view and our experiences dictate the ideas we get to solve a problem. I doubt any American would have come up with the solution our Brazilian friend did. For that matter, most Brazilians wouldn't have solved the problem that way either. But when you look at the problem as it was expressed to the worker, he DID solve it, with as little expense as possible... it's just that his solution would have caused a lot of other problems, like water standing in the hallway, a mildewed rug in the living room, and guests coming in the front door with wet feet.
Just realizing that not everyone sees your problems the same way you do can make you a more effective communicator. Had the resident of the house explained to the man that the problem isn't that water is standing in the shower stall, but that it's not making its way into the drain in the center of the shower, she might have gotten a solution closer to what she was looking for. But, like I did before hearing that story, she assumed that someone else looking at her problem would intuit exactly what to do to solve it.
So, what epiphanies have happened in your life? Has something ever happened to you, or been told to you in a story that changed your way of thinking forever? Tell us about it on your blog.
One of the American families living in the village with us had a problem with the bathroom in their home. Whenever anyone in the house would take a shower, water would remain all the way around the outside edges of the shower stall. Thinking like an American, I thought the obvious solution to the problem was to chip up the concrete to lower the drain and re-tile the bottom of the shower wherever it had been torn up.
A Brazilian worker was hired to solve this problem. The lady of the house went out on some errands, leaving the worker to do his thing. When she returned, there was a puddle of water on her front porch. She didn't think much of it, since it was a tropical area and rain storms occurred occasionally. When she stepped in the door, however, she immediately knew something was wrong. The rug on her hardwood floor in the living room was soaked, and it squished when she walked on it.
It seems that the worker, thinking like someone who had little money, couldn't justify tearing up all that tile and concrete, etc., came up with a solution that seemed perfectly logical to him. He used a chisel and chiseled a little trench out of the shower stall, across the bathroom floor, down the hardwood floor in the hallway, across the living room, and out the front door. This was certainly NOT the solution the resident of that house was looking for, and was not acceptable for them, but if you look at things from the worker's point of view, it was the simplest, cheapest solution that got rid of the water standing in the shower stall.
Hearing that story was something of an epiphany for me. Until then, I never realized how much our point of view and our experiences dictate the ideas we get to solve a problem. I doubt any American would have come up with the solution our Brazilian friend did. For that matter, most Brazilians wouldn't have solved the problem that way either. But when you look at the problem as it was expressed to the worker, he DID solve it, with as little expense as possible... it's just that his solution would have caused a lot of other problems, like water standing in the hallway, a mildewed rug in the living room, and guests coming in the front door with wet feet.
Just realizing that not everyone sees your problems the same way you do can make you a more effective communicator. Had the resident of the house explained to the man that the problem isn't that water is standing in the shower stall, but that it's not making its way into the drain in the center of the shower, she might have gotten a solution closer to what she was looking for. But, like I did before hearing that story, she assumed that someone else looking at her problem would intuit exactly what to do to solve it.
So, what epiphanies have happened in your life? Has something ever happened to you, or been told to you in a story that changed your way of thinking forever? Tell us about it on your blog.
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