I had the pleasure of attending someone’s 70th birthday party last week. It was held at a cozy café in downtown Haliburton and lots of friends were there. This café has a fantastic ramp to its main store, but late in the planning it was realized that the after-hours party was going to take place in a separate room with a different entrance. That entrance had a three-inch step to enter. Panic ensued as the party had many on the guest list that needed a ramp to enter. The team thought about moving the event, changing the time, and started scrambling to solve the problem. The owner of the establishment weighed in and told the team not to worry- “we will just build you a ramp”. This could work as the step was a small one and within a few hours a wooden ramp was installed. I love how things can bubble up when a group identifies a problem and then works together to seek out a solution. And countless times I have gone into a planning discussion feeling a little hopeless and lost in trying to think of a solution and the people I join begin to talk and soon options start to form. Equally sometimes there are distances between our opinion and the opinions of others as we work to plan, or problem solve. From time to time, we too must take a step back from our scramble and reassess the gap and sometimes we too can “just build you a ramp”. Problems do need to be talked about to shake us out of the echo chamber of our brains, if we listen and use a ramp to bridge the divide, we can usually start to hear a solution or the start of one and then we all reach the party together.
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