Don’t Jackhammer My Walnuts!

Nuts, of the edible variety, often have various “degrees of difficulty” when it comes to getting inside them to reach the tasty prize you seek. You can free up a peanut, for example just by squeezing the shell with your fingertips.  If you want to get inside a walnut, though, you probably need a nutcracker – and some considerable leverage. You could take a jackhammer to that walnut, but unfortunately the powerful forces that allow you to easily crack the shell will also obliterate the objective.

Similarly, if you want to plant some posies, a simple garden trowel will do the trick. For a shrub, you might want to use a shovel. If you’re planning to drop a mature tree into your yard you’d better get a backhoe!

These thoughts ran through my head at a recent meeting, where a group of us were discussing how we might most effectively address a long standing challenge to the community, one which many of us believed that could be effectively address by adopting (or perhaps adapting) an online communication tool. Enthusiasm ran high. As we enumerated the steps in the process required to solve our problem, the simple and readily available tool that was under consideration seemed to be less and less capable of answering our needs.

Because we were discussing a pilot project, there are only limited funds available to bring to the table at this time. More sophisticated software is out there, but it is expensive and in many cases provides far more features than are needed in this instance. It was at this point that the thought of nuts and shrubbery came into my head.

” Looking at the problem at hand,” I volunteered, “it appears there are about seven steps to solving this challenge. The tool we are considering actually accomplishes the first three steps extremely efficiently and effectively. Once we get to that point, a simple phone call might help us finish the task.” Maybe, I suggested we should recognize that what we have here is a garden trowel and we shouldn’t try to expect more out of this tool that it had the capacity to deliver. Once everyone else wrapped their heads around that idea, we all agreed that we really had something we could work with, and the meeting moved forward – mapping out the next steps which would combine the use of our digital solution along with the more traditional approach (phone contact) as the basis for our pilot effort. The success of this trial may well lead to increased funding and the capability of obtaining and using more powerful tools in the future.

The almost infinite flexibility of the digital world, and the vision and skills of the people who work in that world, means that there is an almost endless selection of solutions to almost any challenge you can describe. Perhaps the true skill comes in discernment. Don’t expect it a trowel to be able to dig a hole big enough to plant a tree. And don’t try to jackhammer a walnut.