Thinking and Hammers

“The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.”

     –     Martin Heidegger, German philosopher (1889-1976)

“To a man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”

–     Paraphrased snippet often used in board rooms and presentations

Disclaimer:  Yes, I know that Heidegger was widely thought to be a Nazi sympathizer in the early 1930’s and that he was subsequently banned from teaching.  It doesn’t mean that his words aren’t particularly salient in these times.

And, yes, while I am “disclaiming,” one of Dad’s favorite “solutions” was to “get a bigger hammer.”  I often use it, and the bigger hammer often works quite nicely, thank you.

I simply can’t help but wonder though, what it is that makes us think only in terms of what we’ve experienced — what it is that makes that next “thing” look like a nail.  What is it that makes us resist blazing our own trail — and instead makes us choose to take the same road, hoping it leads to a different destination?

One of my closest friends, during the banking meltdown of 2008 – 2012 (is it really over?) sat in a room listening to his peers, many of them older, many of them 40+ years in the industry saying, “This is like the 80’s…” or “this is like the 60’s…” when he finally blurted out, “NO!  This is NOT like any other crisis our markets have endured, because WE did this to ourselves…”

It was the kind of thinking that needed to be done and the kind of statement that needed to be made.  For that firm, in that time, the willingness to think in terms of “here” and “now” made a difference.

Perhaps the biggest difference we can make, when there are big problems in play, is to simply make sure that we ARE thinking — and in the right context.  There may be a trail just waiting to be blazed.