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“Ending the insanity of repeating mistakes and reinventing the wheel”
“Just because a story is from a different industry
doesn’t mean you can’t apply it to yours”
Contributor: Art Murray
Applicable to: Business (culture); Communication (knowledge sharing,
presentations, storytelling)
The story: I was leading a workshop on knowledge management for a group
of medical doctors from the public health sector. I told them the story of Dr.
Govindappa Venkataswamy, an eye surgeon who was frustrated over the high
cost of manufacturing and surgically implanting intraocular lenses (IOLs) in
India. Tens of thousands of people were needlessly going blind every year. On
a trip to the US he became fascinated with McDonald’s, and how remarkably
efficient their whole process was. He took this idea back home and began
manufacturing IOLs locally at a small fraction of the going price. As a result,
many hundreds of thousands of people have had their eyesight restored.
I was astonished when some of the doctors in the audience objected saying,
“That’s not a good example to use, because McDonald’s sells junk food with
trans-fats, which goes against our goal of promoting health.” They couldn’t
see that the main point was the process that was being adapted to solve a
problem. It had nothing to do with unhealthy food.
What did I learn from all this? That people, whether individually or in a group,
are quick to leap to conclusions, which can result in one or more missed
opportunities. Out of a hundred things, they will zero in on the one that has
some perceived error or flaw, and ignore everything else, especially if it
comes from outside their own sphere of influence.
One way I’ve attempted to overcome this tendency is to do what salespeople
and professional speakers often do, which is to pre-empt objections by
dealing with them before the audience has had a chance to raise them.
So before introducing a new idea from a different domain or discipline, be
sure to “prep” the audience in a way that helps them think outside their own
boundaries. Tell them that what they are about to see may at first seem
totally unrelated, and challenge them to “stretch” their imagination to see
how, by making some adjustments, that seemingly irrelevant solution can be
applied to their own situation.
Get them to see that they shouldn’t dismiss something outright just because
it doesn’t fit their world view. Part of it might hold the key to solving the
problem they’re facing. Try to get them to look beyond their own boundaries
for ideas, no matter how highly specialized they perceive their area of
expertise to be.
How do you actually do that? Now that’s a totally different story...
formal case writeup...
Featured Case
The high cost of repeating
mistakes and re-inventing
the wheel
Common barriers to
capturing, sharing and
applying lessons learned
Basic format for a lessons
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Learned World knowledge
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Reference Guide
This month’s book
recommendation:
Learning from successes
and failures
