Blog
The actual goal.
Recently I was at a Toastmasters meeting. We have a new location as of January 10, 2011. We are now located at a church that has a gymnasium next to our room. Last Monday there were a lot of shoe squeaking sounds coming into the room. I got up to close the door, only to realize that our new room doesn’t have a door. So, I sat down, resigned to having to listen to basketball sounds throughout the meeting. A few minutes later, another woman got up to close the door. I thought to myself “Well, she’ll soon find out we don’t have a door.” And she did. But, what happened next was a big lesson learned for me. She went down the hall about eight feet and closed the door to our hallway, which happens to be between our room and the gym. Problem solved.
The goal wasn’t to close the door, as I had thought that it was. The goal was to reduce the basketball sounds coming into our meeting room. I assumed there was only one way to do that and when my one way failed, I gave up. The other woman was operating under the idea that the goal was to make things quieter for us. She didn’t care how that happened, just that it DID happen. It was a great lesson in not only focusing on the actual goal but in being thorough.
Where in your life could you benefit from being more thorough?