
The giant sequoia, the largest tree species on Earth. Sequoia seeds germinate best when they come into direct contact with mineral-rich soil, which is a rare event in forests carpeted with leaf litter and debris. Fire tends to clear the forest floor, which helps the sequoia seeds by exposing the soil. It also opens areas of the forest that the young trees need to grow. For more, see "USGS Studies Wildfire Ecology in the Western United States Part 1". Photo courtesy U.S. National Climatic Data Center of the U.S. Department of Commerce.
In the world of entertainment, it's easy to distinguish right from wrong, good from bad, and beautiful from ugly. That's part of what makes entertainment entertaining, because it shields us from the cares and confusion and nuance of reality, and lets us enter a world of clarity and simplicity and thrilling success. But when we expect the same of the real world, we're choosing a path that leads to trouble.
The complexity of reality appears in almost everything we do at work — workplace politics, negotiations, making design trade-offs — even choosing friends and allies. We have to "take the good with the bad" so often that the phrase itself is a cliché. Accepting what we don't want as a means of getting what we do want isn't always hypocritical — rather, it can be an acknowledgement of the variety and complexity of the real world.
Little in life — some say nothing in life — is all good or all bad. Even that statement is mixed. It means that the most horrible events can have some good consequences — difficult as they might be to see at first. Just as there are trees whose seeds cannot germinate until fire chars their forests, there are projects that cannot find funding until bankruptcy threatens their companies.
And even the most wonderful events can have some bad consequences — unwilling as we might be to see them at first. Rain falling on arid land is the salvation of most of the plants it visits — except those living in the no-longer-dry arroyos that carry the inevitable flash floods. And successful market-dominating products can lead companies to concentrate on existing customers longer than they should, freezing those companies out of new opportunities until too late.
If we choose to, we can usually find the bad in any experience. That can be worthwhile, when finding it leads to learning, or when it helps us avert failure. It can also be wasteful, when focusing on the bad drains us of energy or leads us to miss whatever joy or thrill the experience offers.
Little in life — some
say nothing in life — is
all good or all badAnd we can also choose to emphasize the good of any experience. Sometimes the good is hard to find, or we must put some time or distance between the experience and ourselves to fully grasp the good. Finding that good can give the experience meaning, especially when the discovery requires real effort. But it can also insulate us from important lessons, when we reject the whole of the experience to accept only that good.
Few of us consistently make the right choices, grasping the good and the bad and the complexity of every situation. But in teams, almost certainly, someone has it right. Embrace your disagreements. Rely on each other for a true picture of reality. Top
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Are you fed up with tense, explosive meetings? Are you or a colleague the target of a bully? Destructive conflict can ruin organizations. But if we believe that all conflict is destructive, and that we can somehow eliminate conflict, or that conflict is an enemy of productivity, then we're in conflict with Conflict itself. Read 101 Tips for Managing Conflict to learn how to make peace with conflict and make it an organizational asset. Order Now!
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Related articles
More articles on Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness:
Games for Meetings: IV
- We spend a lot of time and emotional energy in meetings, much of it engaged in any of dozens of ritualized
games. Here's Part IV of a little catalog of some of our favorites, and what we could do about them.
Trying to Do It Right the First Time Isn't Always Best
- You've probably heard the slogan, "Do it right the first time." It makes sense for some kinds
of work, but not for all. For more and more of the work done in modern organizations, doing it right
the first time — or even trying to — might be the wrong way to go.
The Ups and Downs of American Handshakes: II
- Where the handshake is a customary business greeting, it's possible to offend accidentally. Here's Part
II of a set of guidelines for handshakes in the USA.
Reactance and Decision Making
- Some decisions are easy. Some are difficult. Some decisions that we think will be easy turn out to be
very, very difficult. What makes decisions difficult?
Be Choosier About Job Offers: II
- An unfortunate outcome of job searches occurs when a job seeker feels forced to accept an offer that
isn't a good fit. Sometimes financial pressures are so severe that the seeker has little choice. But
financial pressures are partly perceptual. Here's how to manage feeling that pressure.
See also Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness and Conflict Management for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
Coming March 29: Time Slot Recycling: The Risks
- When we can't begin a meeting because some people haven't arrived, we sometimes cancel the meeting and hold a different one, with the people who are in attendance. It might seem like a good way to avoid wasting time, but there are risks. Available here and by RSS on March 29.
And on April 5: The Fallacy of Division
- Errors of reasoning are pervasive in everyday thought in most organizations. One of the more common errors is called the Fallacy of Division, in which we assume that attributes of a class apply to all members of that class. It leads to ridiculous results. Available here and by RSS on April 5.
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