We have a set of magnetic toys my kids play with–animals with interchangeable torsos, heads, and legs. Today we could not find the legs to the giraffe. Before I could begin searching for the missing pieces, my daughter simply placed the existing pieces on the train table in the “water” area and said, “the giraffe is standing in the water.”
Later, I searched all over the room for the missing pieces, only to learn from my wife that they had been missing for a year, so my search was doomed to failure from the start.
How often in our work do we fail to see the 4-year old solution? How often do we bang our heads against the wall in an effort to solve the problem as we have defined it, when perhaps, that is not the problem at all?
The problem is not about how to fix the giraffe; it is how to have fun. And if something is missing or not perfect, we can worry and fret and try to change things…or we can find a different way to have fun. Now, if I could just get her to teach that to my 2-year old.
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This reminds me of former Magellan Fund manager Peter Lynch, author of the bestselling stock investing books, who ingrained in me the idea to never buy a stock a 5-year-old can’t describe the business of in a sentence.
He’s got a point. So does your daughter.
Brilliant! We can learn a lot from our kids.
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