One Person

Can one person make a difference?  I am sure each of you have asked yourself this at some point in your lives. It has been one of the things circling around in my head this week.  On top of that comes an additional question.  Is the effectiveness of the individual molded by the group they are a part of?  Well, let's take a crack at this.  I have always believed and still believe that a single person can make a difference, and I suspect we can all cite examples we've read about or heard about.  But I am talking about regular people who change the world through their words and activities.  Let me give you an example.

In 1977, I was working at my hometown Municipal Pool during my college summer break and we had a problem.  It was a dry summer following a dry spring and the amount of water the city had on hand was so low that there was a concern about being able to fight a fire if we had one.  So, the city fathers told me that we would keep the pool open as long as the water level was safe.  When evaporation took the water level down to the point it would no longer be safe for people to get in and out of the pool, we were to close until such time as the water shortage corrected itself.  Ok, I had my marching orders and knew what I needed to do.  Then came Mr Green. 

The day came when I had to make the decision to close the pool. At the end of that day, after the pool was closed, a knock came at the door.  I answered and in came Mr Green.  He ran the local rendering company and was not anyone I had ever met before.  He came inside and called me "Mr Martin."  I was 20 or 21 years old at the time and having that honorific applied to me was a bit startling.  He talked to me about the fact that the pool was the only fun that his children had in the summer and asked if I could keep the pool open as long as possible.  That question changed the way I looked at the situation.  After he left, I decided I would go to the pool in the middle of the night and take the water that I needed to keep running.  I did exactly that and it took three weeks before Harold Woods, the Superintendent of Water, figured out what I had been doing. I came out of the bath house one morning before we opened and Harold was standing beside the pool. He looked up at me and said, "It's amazing how this water quit evaporating, isn't it!" All I could say was "Uh huh." But by that time the crisis was past and we continued operating the rest of the summer.  One person, Mr Green, changed a great deal of the summer for a bunch of kids in Iowa. 

I think this same thing still happens, only the power of the communication tools that we have at our disposal puts the entire planet within our reach.  With a little work, it is now possible to reach out to almost anyone and have a conversation.  The catch to this is that this seems to give people a "right" to comment on anything.  This commenting is not the thing that I am talking about.  If Mr Green had put an editorial in the local newspaper, with his same thoughts and concerns, I guarantee I would have been much more likely to stand by the direction that I had originally been given.  But he didn't.  He came and had a conversation with me - one on one.  I know that having this level of intimacy across the Internet world is difficult, but I actually believe that it is still possible.  For me, I just need to decide what is important and then figure out how to reach out to the right person,  I don't need to just go out and "blast" my thoughts everywhere about a topic.  I need to be more selective in the way that I reach out.

Regarding the second part of question at the beginning of this blog, I truly believe that individual ideas and performance can without question be affected by the group of people that surround the person.  I recently finished a book called, "The Checklist Manifesto."  Someday I'd like to spend a little more time sharing some of the ideas and thoughts I took from it, but there was one thing that clearly resounded with me. A team has a better chance to be perfect, with all of the right answers, and all of the best ideas than any of the individuals in that team would be able to do on their own.  This is really something to stop and consider.  I believe we all recognize that a strong team will come up with better answers than an individual, but I for one, have to admit that working with a team is way down on my list of things I want to do.  I prefer to figure things out by myself and then gather a team to help with next steps.  This book tells me that I will be able to come up with better ideas with quicker and more impacting results if I turn that thought process on its head and get the team involved sooner.  There are good examples where this works very well: like airline crews, firefighters, and medical teams.  I guess I will have to give this some additional thought.

I think that is enough for today, but I still have a great ice cream story that illustrates how one person can change things.  One of these days I will work it in. If you want to know the story early, reach out to me, one on one, and I will be more than happy to share.