Tag: imagination

Lessons from Being a Dad Part 2 Laundry Baskets, Snowball Fights, and Looking at Things Differently (5-15-19)

Last week was about Into the Spider-verse and fighting biases.  This week is about laundry baskets, “snowball” fights, and looking at things differently.

Over Christmas break in 2018 we started a new family tradition.  There was no snow and nothing to do outside, so we decided to play indoor capture the flag where we used socks as snowballs.  We set up forts throughout the house and then brought down laundry baskets filled with socks to throw at each other.  It was me and my wife vs. our daughters and their friend.  The rules are simple.  First team to get all three flags into their fort wins.  If you get hit with a “snowball” you have to drop the flag and you can’t pick it up.

There we are in the midst of an intense battle when I see this thing whiz by me in the kitchen.  I look up and realize that Violet has taken the laundry basket that was holding the snowballs and put it over her body as a moveable shield.  Complete genius!  My wife and I can’t hit her, because she’s ducked low and covered like a turtle.  She leads her team to a victory.  The interesting thing is that we had played several rounds and every round the laundry basket was the thing that held the snowballs.  We never thought it could have any other use or purpose.  However, Violet saw something else.  She realized that by rethinking what the laundry basket was, she could use it in a new way to win.

You might be wondering what this has to do with anything.  As a 5 year old with a feral imagination, Violet has taught us how to look at things differently.  She consistently challenges us to reassess our assumptions.  She has taught me that those things that I think are for recycling are actually parts to make a robot rocket dinosaur transformer who is programmed to save the universe.  She has taught me that jump ropes are jump ropes and lassos and pulley systems to help her raise and lower stuffed animals over the balcony.

Now think about work for a moment.  How often at work do we find ourselves looking at the same thing the same way over and over and over again?  How often do we have a project or a process that we take at face value, just because that is the way it is presented to us?  What we often fail to realize is that when presented with something (or someone) we have a choice.  We can accept them at face value or we can look at them from different perspectives to find value we never knew existed.

The challenge: How will you reexamine things and people to find something new?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Lessons from Being a Dad Part 2 Alice, Imagination, Vision, and the Love Robot (6-13-18)

Last week we kicked off a series on lessons I’ve learned from being a dad.  We started with Violet, persistence, and her relentless quest for cookies.  This week I want us to reflect on Alice, imagination, vision, and the creation of the Love Robot.

At my house we have an invention box.  Essentially, the invention box contains stuff that could be recycled.  My daughters rummage through the invention box from time to time to create things.  Back in February, Alice needed to have a container for school that could hold valentines.  She went over to the invention box.  Most people would have seen a collection of junk.  Most people would have seen an empty shoe box, caps to water bottles, leftover ribbon, and some cardboard.  Alice saw those individual parts, but she also saw something greater.  She saw potential.  She took the time to pause and imagine until she had the vision to realize that with some paint and assembly those things could become the Love Robot.  See the picture.

You might be wondering what this has to do with work.  The above story is about Alice having the creative vision to see and then bring to life potential.  She was able to look at things in a different way and then use them to create something greater than the sum of its parts.  Kids do stuff like this all the time, and the sad part is I feel that we often lose this as we get older.

Think about our work for a moment.  We have so much more potential to leverage our imaginations and vision on the things we work on every day.  We also have a huge opportunity to use our imagination and vision to see the best in each other, so we can build each other up to reach greatness.  While we have these opportunities, we don’t always take advantage of them.  I’m not sure why we lose this imaginative vision, but we do.  Maybe it’s the projects we are working on.  Maybe we get too busy and lose the ability to daydream.  Maybe we keep looking at the problem from the same angle over and over and over again, so we miss seeing what we COULD do, if we were willing to trying something different.  Maybe we get too tired from running into walls, so we give up on imagining what we COULD do, if we pushed a little harder.  Maybe we look at the people around us in the same way so often that we lose sight of who they COULD be, if they only had a little nudge of support.

Here is to being more like Alice, to being able to see beauty and potential in all people and things.  Here’s to having hands that make that imaginative vision a reality.  The challenge: What do you see when you look at the work and the people around you?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry