Member-only story
During a recent dialogue session, the conversation started with a participant pointing out her unhappiness about the government’s inadequate response to inflation.
Building on this, other participants started sharing their thoughts on what they saw as gaps and inadequacies in other policies and practices. As the dialogue session progressed, the atmosphere in the hall turned negative as “all the wrongs” were discussed. Very soon, it started to feel like the organization could do no right and was failing in everything.
That is, until an individual stood up and thanked the leaders on the panel for taking care of us.
Suddenly, the mood changed.
At that moment, it dawned on the participants that while the organization’s policies could not satisfy everyone (and some had gaps), the organization has overall achieved much and has gotten a lot more things right than they got wrong. The participants had been too focused on the few blemishes and had forgotten that the fruit was still good …. and that they had a lot to be happy about.
I walked away from the townhall with the following two life lessons:
A single individual can make a difference. All it takes is courage to speak up, and that one comment can turn the tide. Edmund Burk once said: “for evil to triumph in the world is that good men do nothing”.
Let’s not be too quick to discard the fruit because of the blemishes. Few things in life are perfect. If we overly focus on looking for perfection, we will miss out on the good that the “imperfect” offers.
