BEARS DANCING
Friday Dec. 5, 2014
Déjà in my vu …
Recently I’ve focused on asking this question in encounters with customers, colleagues and competitors: “Am I helping something get started, helping something improve or helping something to get finished?”
Just a few pauses daily.
Not a time waster.
More of an opportunity optimizer.
This week’s experiences reminded me of last July, in that course I took in Colorado …
We did an exercise, watching a basketball video – our task to observe (between a white-shirted and black-shirted teams), then count how many times white shirted players touched the ball.
We were then asked whether we saw the dancing bear.
The piece was replayed. Sure enough, there was a bear dancing backwards through the players. We’d not seen it.
That illustration was to remind us not to get so focused on focusing on what we are focusing upon, that we miss something really obvious and unique worthy of our attention.
The take-away was supposed to be about not-missing opportunities. The better take-away, in my view, is that we have an opportunity to use that technique in day to day interactions with friends, colleagues, neighbours and family.
We get so used to their voices, their ‘scripts’ – we are unlikely to notice something amiss, or new, or tiny because we are so used to them, so used to same-old responses to niceties of conversation that we don’t pause to catch changes in expression, lighter or sadder tone, or any answer with fine in it.
I’m fine.
Things are going just fine.
Or pick your word – when you hear it, something is being hidden, glossed over or ignored.
That’s a dancing bear.
Mark Kolke
column written/ published from Calgary, AB
morning walk: -10C/14F, overcast, calm, snow is soft like brown sugar in the streets – mildness is at hand. Gusta in normal mode, we quickened our gait … rosy cheeks.
Reader feedback:
P.S. to yesterday’s comment: Mr. Gilchrist presents his findings and theory on the right brain/left brain conundrum and interweaves it with its effect on the historical evolution of society. Not finished reading yet, but it is far more lucid and coherent than any of Douglas Hofstadter’s treatises. I am well, business is entertaining (as it should be). It has been over 10 years since incorporation, and it is finally what I had in mind at the outset. So now I am re-calibrating, setting my sights higher, SS, Calgary, AB
