Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Starting with the Obvious

Starting with the Obvious

Most people I know consider themselves great problem solvers. They love particularly to solve other people’s problems. There was a line in a song I once heard that has always stuck in my mind. “You can’t even run your life, I’ll be damned if you’ll run mine.”

As a rule of thumb I don’t try and solve other people’s problems if they haven’t made an effort to solve their own or honestly asked for my assistance. We are too quick to offer unsolicited advice to those who are not obliged to listen to it. Sometimes people need someone to talk to and that is a good thing, but know the difference between someone wanting to vent or get attention and someone asking for advice.

I sit on a Township Zoning Appeals Board and I saw that human tendency at play last night. A man was seeking to get a variance to a setback requirement to build a Pole Building. In zoning there are requirements such as how far from the road a structure needs to be and how far from the property line of a neighbor. The petitioner had applied for relief from the setback requirement, without first going through the first part of the process. Normally a person requests a building permit and draws a sketch that shows the setbacks. He then submits it to the zoning administrator who goes out and takes a look at where the structure is to be placed. So we sat around for half an hour, all the members trying to solve this guy’s problem which could likely have been solved if the normal procedure had been followed. (The petitioneer had not requested a building permit, and the administrator had not been out to look at the property.)

Another example, independent of this one happened to me yesterday. My car wouldn’t start so I bought a new battery. Today the new batter would not start and I speculated there was a drain on one of the circuits that was drawing it down. I stopped by my local auto shop and the owner told me he would show me how to check that hypothesis out.

My idea was to go to the fuse box and test each wiring circuit until I found the one responsible. He had a better way. (Check the battery with a test light) Now this is the important part and it bears on the zoning board experience. He checked first to make sure there were no lights on when the car was sitting with the ignition turned off. This is like checking to see if the car has gas in the tank before taking apart the carburetor. Or checking to make sure the breaker is released on a chainsaw before concluding the engine is locked up. It involved considering the obvious before deciding the problem lies deeper than the tip of one’s nose. This is an ‘oft overlooked step in the problem solving process. I have a connectional mind and that preliminary examination by the shop owner came to mind last night as my fellow board members jumped in and with the best of intentions tried to help the petitioner solve his problem.

I am not trying to sound smug and superior… Most of these board members were as smart or smarter than I am, but it only shows the human tendency to jump to the complexity of an issue before eliminating the obvious.