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United in the same mind and in the same purpose

February 11, 2005 - by Robert E. Stevens, GENESIS II (The Second Beginning) E-Mail: views@aol.com

The above quote is taken from the first letter of Saint Paul to the Corinthians.  No, I am not going to venture into the realm of religion.  The quote, however, was used in a recent Homily.  Listening as I usually do, I started visualizing how what was being said not only fit the real world of society at large as was the object of the Homilist, but also how it might fit other areas such as business and government.  It is a trick I use to try to really understand what is being said.

What I heard was something akin to "If you are not with me, you are against me" or "It is my way or the highway."  Or it could be something like, "To say anything different, is to be a traitor."  The last statement is probably the effect of spending the evening studying the French Revolution and the life of Robespierre.  The "My way or the highway" comes from experiences in business.  Actually good examples of this type of behavior can be seen in Bob Herbold's new book The Fiefdom Syndrome.  The first quote "not with me/against me" cuts across all three areas of organizational structures.

What really got me was how these statements can be totally out of focus.  The Biblical verse also contains the statement "that there be no divisions among you."  My concern is that normally there should always be divisions -- it's not a bad thing.  Not necessarily in the objective, but in the ways of achieving the objective.  My early learning was that there are Objectives, Goals, Strategies and Measures to be accounted for in every action.  Most of the encounters of differences I have seen are related to the Goals, not the Objective.  Groups generally agree on the specific objective, the disagreement is usually how to achieve the objective.  If we all followed one way and only one way of thinking, there would be only one type of fried chicken.  Can you imagine no Kentucky Fried Chicken or only one type of automobile like a black Ford, for example?

A healthy organization invites differences of opinion and open discourse, much like the concept of "All One Body" but each having different "gifts," different points of view to contribute.   It is through the evaluation of differences that we ultimately end up with the best plan of action.  I don't believe I have ever seen the adoption of the first proposal suggested for any project.  It seems that the combined thinking of a group of people will always be better than the thoughts of just one person, assuming that the one person is in the group.  Historically, I have found that there is never a one-to-one Objective/Goal relationship.  There are usually many goals required to achieve one objective.  Usually the chosen way is highly dependent upon the resources available.  That is to say that a lack of resources may well result in selecting a second or third plan of action choice.

I am reminded of a picture given to me over 30 years ago.  I was leaving my assignment in the Paper Division for a new one in the Package Soap Division.  One of the gifts my group gave me was a picture of the team taken outside of the Tech Building.  If you turned the picture around, the back contained a photograph of the group from the rear.  The message was that there is always more than one way to look at a problem.  For me, this turned out to be an extremely valuable concept. 

If you take anything away from this page, I hope it is that what you see depends upon where you are standing.  In problem solving, walk around the mountain before developing a plan of action.


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