Lateral thinking
A man and his son are in a car crash. The man is killed and the son is taken to hospital gravely injured. When he gets there, the surgeon says “I can’t operate on this boy- he is my son!” How is this possible?(Answer somewhere below. I’m not telling you where)
I’ve talked to lots of colleagues lately about using blogs for campus communication and community building.
The reception to my idea has been tepid.
It took me awhile to understand why, but I think I finally get it.
Exhibit A:
(From an actual conversation - names changed to protect the guilty)
Sally (to a co-worker): “Joe, you blog, don’t you?”
Joe: “Hah, I used to five years ago when it was the cool thing to do.”
Exhibit B:
(A totally hypothetical situation)
A campus administrator bans all blogging by his employees because he fears a loose cannon will expose campus fraud, corruption and mediocrity.
What’s going on?
Joe perceives blogging as an online personal journal filled with schlock.
The campus administrator perceives blogging as the tool of 21st century muckraking journalists.
You may have perceived the surgeon in the story above as a man, and thus failed to recognize that the surgeon was the boy’s mother (note: there are other possible explanations, so keep thinking).
Yes, surgeons are most often men, but they don’t have to be. Blogs have most often been used as personal online journals and platforms for Woodward and Bernstein wannabes. But they don’t have to be.
There are many challenges in IT these days: funding, security, identity management, content management, personnel management, data ownership, web portals, web 2.0, digital media production, training, support, just trying to keep up with the ridiculous speed of change.
Are we stuck in the ways we perceive these challenges? How might a little lateral thinking help us?
Pick a challenge and talk among yourselves. Feel free to use this blog’s nifty commenting feature to share your creative lateral ideas and let’s work together to find solutions.