You probably have seen pictures of people huddled around a radio listening to the news or entertainment. This was the age before TV, so your imagination had to fill in the “pictures” of what was happening. Families would spend time together listening and discussing what was being said. Children would ask what a word meant, and adults would have to fill in the knowledge gap since descriptions of an object were not part of the broadcast. You did not hear, “you can google that.”
Not too much later, TV makes radio less interesting. There are no pictures in radio, we have to use our imaginations to create the images in our minds. TV gives you sound and moving pictures. It means we don’t have to think too much about what is happening, we can see it. No real explanation of what something is on TV is required because you can see it all.
TV is the shortest path away from boredom for many and that creates a problem for some. Our ability to “see” a solution to a problem is made harder by our lack of imagination. We can’t “see” how something will work unless we have a visual representation of the solution.
I was recently listening to a series of podcasts. One in particular was about revolutions in Iran. I remember the TV images of the students protesting and what was going on at the time, this is in the last 70’s. As I imagine the scene I am struct by a thought, my kids don’t know what this all looks like. Sure, with our smart phones and the internet a quick search will pull down hundreds of video clips of the era and they will get a visual of what happened. But that is not using their imagination, it is not forcing them to visualize what is going on in a place or time.
That made me wonder, are we losing our ability as a species to imagine? Is our modern world and society creating people that only see an App as the solution to a problem?
Most “problems” are “people problems” and the solution to those should be found in the “people” space. Our reliance on machines to solve problems is an evolutionary step, but are we becoming too reliant on the machine doing the work rather than us solving the problem? Our world is become a place where expertise is focused on a very small set of individuals. The 1% situation is not a money issue, it is an imagination and capability issue.
This Blog Post is more posing a question that linking something in the real world to a business. I was listening to a podcast and imagining what people were doing in the audio clip. I was painting a picture of what it all looked like by the descriptions provided and filling in the rest with my imagination and past experiences.
As a builder/carpenter, I am often asked to solve a special problem with a piece of furniture or similar item. In my mind, I visualize the item and then use paper and pencil and later put into CAD form so I can describe the item to others. In many cases, the drawing has to be very detailed for someone to “see” how that cabinet or piece of furniture will “solve” the problem.
I have seen something similar happen in the business consulting space. Most people look for Software systems to solve problems in their business. “Only a computer program will solve this issue,” is what I hear often. The reality, however, is that people and processes are the solution to the “problem” and the machine/computer/software/app is just ensuring that the humans follow the process.
When faced with an issue in any organization, remember that it is people that you are dealing with. Even a robot is waiting for a human to program it, so start with the humans and work your way to the machines. You will find that the solution is far better than starting with the machine and then ending up with the human. We have to refocus our training on developing an imagination and learning radio and how to imagine the scene means in the real world.
Gramatges Consulting 