#211 - Through Whose Looking Glass?

Let's take a sprinkler, something simple, just the basic sprinkler.

To a homeowner, it might be something that keeps the grass green.

To an irrigation contractor, it's a service call.

To a distributor, it's an SKU.

To a manufacturer, it's a product line.

To a water manager, it might be a 1.5 gallon per minute emission device.

To the person paying the water bill, it's money, but it's the same sprinkler.

but it could have completely different interpretations.

It could be a completely different sprinkler to each person.

And I think this happens all the time everywhere.

And it's something I'm trying to remind myself of, especially when it relates to being right or being correct, or actually maybe trying to find understanding.

You know, who are you with? What are you talking about? How might they be thinking about this sprinkler? And how are you thinking about this sprinkler? It's the same exact sprinkler, but you can come to it from a completely different approach.

So when we look at a problem through our own little lens or our own little window, oftentimes it can be easy to assume everyone else must be seeing the same thing.

Is irrigation in Boston the same as irrigation in Tampa and the same in Phoenix and Seattle? It's not.

But sometimes it's easy to think that the entire industry sees what we see, and it must be the same.

And there are some overarching and parallels and similarities, but it's typically not the same.

And I've been thinking about this a lot because the more people I talk with and talk to in this industry, the more I realize that everybody is just operating from a completely different looking glass.

Take a golf course superintendent, on a golf course who sees water different than the irrigation manufacturer.

A technician standing in a valve box sees something different than the person sitting in the corporate office.

And the person designing the software sees something different than the person driving around at six in the morning trying to figure out why the grass is brown.

And none of them are necessarily wrong.

They're just having a different experience and standing somewhere different.

And I think curiosity begins when you become willing to walk around on the other side.

It might be like, instead of saying, how could they possibly think that? Perhaps another way.

to see things or ask that question might be, what are they seeing that I'm not? And that question sort of changes the perspective on things.