The Best Place Not to Find Solutions

Let me tell you the best place not to find solutions. My nephew, Jared was four years old when he moved to Oregon. One day, I took him on a walk. We were looking for mushrooms, I explained. I told him to keep his eyes peeled on the forest floor – because that is where you find them. I was about to learn the best place not to find solutions – in this case, mushrooms.

Not having children of my own, I wasn’t prepared for the experience. We didn’t go very far. He was poking around at slugs, climbing tree stumps, and eyeing the birds in the canopy. I couldn’t keep his focus on the mossy ground.

We weren’t finding any mushrooms, either, and my patience with him was waning. I turned around to see him squinting and staring up at a tree. Just as I started to give him another lecture about looking on the ground, he pointed up the alder and asked, “Aren’t those mushwooms, Aunt Chwissy?” I started to scold him, and then I looked up the tree.

I had always looked in the best place not to find solutions!

There were hundreds of mushrooms on the trunk of that rotten alder! (I found out later that they were Pleurotus Ostreatus – Oyster mushrooms, choice edibles. To this day, they are my favorites for making pizza.)

Lesson: I had always found mushrooms on the forest floor because that was the only place I ever looked. That was the best place not to find solutions! My nephew – all three feet of him – gave me the insight to look elsewhere. He taught me that when you focus, you filter! Now I keep that lesson close to my heart.

Change where you’re looking for solutions for those management problems. Adopt another viewpoint for a leadership challenge. Purposely detour from your routine a little each day:

• Sit in a different place at a meeting or luncheon – you’ll get a different view.
• Converse with someone outside your normal circles – younger, older, richer, poorer.
• Pose questions about your challenges to your team or an outsider.
• Then, listen to what they say!
• Look at your own workplace as if you’ve never seen it before. Come in the back door.
• Stay open to the impressions you get or those you hear from others.

Don’t keep looking in the best place not to find solutions. Think like a four-year-old sometimes. You’ll get great insights from outside your normal perspective, and they’ll improve your leadership skills. You haven’t peaked yet!