I would like to tell you a short story. There was once an old wise man who after retiring from his work decided to buy a house in his old village and moved there to live his life in a peaceful setting. All was well until it wasn’t.
Once the school started, there were a few boys who used to walk past his home on their way to school. They would drum on the metal garbage bins that were near the window of the wise man’s bedroom. He would find this noise to be too disturbing and wanted the boys to stop the drumming.
Knowing that asking the boys to stop drumming might not work, as they seem to be enjoying the act, the wise man decided to do the next best thing he knew.
The next morning, he popped out of his house at the exact time that the boys started to drum. Once they finished drumming, he called them out and said, “I love the way you drum. I would like you to drum for me everyday morning at the same time. I will pay you a 1$ every day.”
The boys loved it. They started playing there every day. After a few days, the wise man said that due to the economy being bad, he can only pay them 50 cents for the drumming. The boys were not happy but still continued to drum for the old man.
A couple of weeks later, the old man again brought the boys together and said that since he is retired and he has not got his pension yet, he will only be able to pay them 20 cents a day going forward.
At this the boys got really angry and the eldest of them said “Do you really think that we will play drums for your stupid 20 cents? Please find someone else to do that for you!” and walked away.
They never drummed at the particular spot and the old wise man lived peacefully thereafter.
Now there are a few life lessons for us from this story:
The old man could have tried other ways of getting the boys to stop drumming. He could have reasoned with them that it disturbs him, requested them to stop drumming. If that didn’t work, he could have ordered them to stop drumming or complained to their parents and asked them to get the boys to stop drumming.
However, knowing that boys at this age are usually not receptive to reason and hate being coerced or ordered to do anything, the wise man decided to be patient and deal with them in a way that would make them stop drumming of their own volition and not because they were asked to do so. Hence, he devised this plan and got them to stop playing there permanently. Sure, this required some patience and took some time but eventually he got what he wanted.
So patience, planning and knowing whom you want to influence and what drives them is critical for success.
There is an even more important lesson for all of us here.
There is a significant difference between play and work. Play is self motivated and self-driven. It gives us joy and happiness. It is spontaneous and doesn’t require any supervision or a separate reward.
However, when the same activity becomes work instead of play, motivation, joy and happiness now start to depend on the rewards and fairness of exchange.
In a business setting, what is important is to create a culture where people think of their activities as play rather than work.
When it comes to rewarding and recognising our employees, we need to be aware of what they think is fun and play and ensure that we don’t make what is fun and play in our environments feel like work by rewarding those very tasks, just like the wise man did to the kids.
In Conclusion:
To summarise my learnings:
- Patience and planning pays
- It is better to know what moves the people we want to influence
- There is always more than one way to solve a problem
- Don’t do anything that can transform play into work
These are my learning from the story. What are yours? Please do share them here as comments.
