You’re laying pipes and there’s a rock. I wrote about this here and here 4 months ago. When you encounter something unexpected, you can have a not-my-problem mindset. Are you smiling and nodding your head? Perhaps, you are thinking of someone you know.
But there are reasons that you would want to keep the rock there and work around it.
1. Respecting nature
Imagine you are constructing a township and you find a century-old tree where you had planned to put a swimming pool. In respect of nature, you re-draw the plans to locate your swimming pool elsewhere.
(Credit to my good friend, Dr. Mohammed Ariff Abdullah for sharing this point of view)
Or you are constructing a road and there’s a landslip, exposing a weakness at the spot. It makes sense to take heed what nature wants to tell us. This will save everyone a lot of problems later on.
2. Respecting other people’s work because some short-cuts are plain st*pid
This picture shows a cable tray. It’s used to house cables (electrical, telephone) or insulated ducting for air-conditioning systems.
Here’s a real story from a project a friend was working on. His workers had already installed their cable trays and laid out the electrical cabling onto it. Job done! (Applause!)
Then comes the air-conditioning installation team. They are supposed to lay their own trays for their ducting — and work around existing trays either by installing the trays higher, lower, or in parallel.
But, seeing that there are already cable trays there, they conveniently pushed the existing cables aside and use the trays for their ducting.
Imagine the ruckus that caused! And the commercial losses when they had to redo the ducting again. #dothingsrightthefirsttimearound
This is not even the horror of horrors. I have heard of workers just cutting the existing cabling just because they were ‘in the way’.
So folks, sometimes a picture does not tell the whole story. Some things are not to be moved. Discern when it should be moved and when it shouldn’t.
#criticalthinking #problemsolving #solutionmindset #workethics #trainergina #ginaphan #gp
About the Author: Gina Phan is a consultant and trainer with Zinfinity Consulting. She currently conducts courses in workplace performance skills. Click here to contact her, follow her on Facebook or connect with her on Linkedin.
