“Peel it from the other end.”
“What?” I said looking up at Nat as he sat down at the table across from me.
Grinning, Nat repeated himself, “Try pealing it from the opposite end.”
To humor him, I turned the banana upside down and was surprise to see Nat was right. The banana peeled easily from the opposite end.
I would have known this if I had read “Why Not?” A book about problem solving with a purpose by Barry Nalebuff and Ian Ayres.
Sometimes it is necessary to approach a challenge from an avenue you hadn’t considered taking before. I noticed my shampoo bottle is designed around the same principle. The cap is on the bottom, not the top. All they had to do to make this upside down bottle stand upright was make a flat cap. It’s so simple, yet brilliant.
This goes back to what Nat wrote about last week. A component of our business model was creating a significant problem for us, or as he defined it, a “pressure cooker.” The solution we discovered was to completely turn one part of our business on its head.
How can this same principle be applied in your field?
If you are a college ministry leader, what are you doing to recruit first year students? What would it look like to do the opposite? How about the structure of your student leadership? What would it mean to flip it upside down? What subtle changes would you have to make in order for the new upside down structure to stand up. It may not be as easy as it was for the shampoo bottle manufacturers, but then again, it might.
“Would flipping it work?” This is the question asked by the authors of “Why Not?” It works for bananas and ketchup bottles. Why don’t we all ask this questions?
“For the most part, people find an answer that works and don’t get in the habit of looking for an even better solution. Or we think there is some natural way of doing things and stop looking for alternatives.” – Nalebuff and Ayres
Is this true for your organization? What’s stopping you from flipping it? When is this dangerous, or at the least, a bad idea?
