It's Not Luck - Eliyahu M. Goldratt [57]
“The need to consider his needs.” She’s a little irritated at me being so picky.
“That’s it,” I say. “Write it down.”
When she does I show her why it pays to be precise. “Try to read it now adding the words ‘In order to,’ and ‘I must.’ See if it makes sense.
“In order to ‘Consider Eric’s needs,’ I must ‘Not see Eric until Monday.’ I still think that he could be more flexible. Now what?”
“What is your common objective? Why is it important to you to consider Eric’s needs and at the same time be close to him?”
“Because, because . . . I know it, but . . . ”
“Look at the previous cloud,” I try to help. “The one we wrote about Debbie.”
She glances at it and then smiles. “It’s almost the same objective. ‘Maintain a good friendship with Eric.’” She completes her cloud.
“In order to maintain a good friendship you must be with him, but at the same time you must consider his needs. You see, Sharon. Not seeing Eric until Monday puts you in conflict, which jeopardizes an important objective of yours.”
She doesn’t really listen. “Daddy? I think that my cloud about Eric is exactly Debbie’s cloud about me.” She looks again at Debbie’s cloud.
It gives her a new perspective.
“Do you understand Debbie’s behavior better?”
“You know what? I’m sure that Debbie and I can agree about what friendship is and what is becoming ownership. This will be a great discussion. Maybe Morn will allow me to sleep over at Debbie’s house tonight.”
And with that, my gazelle is gone.
Before I reach the door, she’s back. “She agreed. Oh, thank you Daddy. Thank you so much.”
It’s a good feeling.
“Do you want to try to decipher your third complaint?” Not that it matters now, but I want to spend a little more time with my full-of-life girl.
“Why not,” she agrees. “What was it?”
“Something about Chris.”
“Oh yes.” She is serious again, “It’s bad.”
“Rather than telling me what happened, why don’t you write it down, as a cloud?” “I’ll try,” and she sits down.
First she writes, “Give math homework to Kim.” Below it, “Don’t give math homework to anybody.”
It’s interesting. I wait patiently for further developments.
After about a minute or two of twisting she writes to the left, “Keep my promise to Chris.” And above it, “Save Kim.”
“The objective is obvious, ‘Maintain good friendships.’ But does the whole thing make sense?” she asks.
“It does, if you’ve done the math work together with Chris,” I say.
“That’s exactly what happened. But Kim begged for it, I didn’t have the heart to say no.”
My poor baby. Three hits, from three different directions, all perfectly aimed at her most important thing—maintaining good friendships. And she didn’t know how to handle even one, not to mention all three. No wonder she crawled into her cocoon.
Too frequently Sharon goes into her withdrawals. And we suspected that something was wrong with the kid. Maintaining good friendships is not an easy objective. It’s very easy to get hurt. But it’s certainly worthwhile.
Where were we? Why haven’t we given her a hand? It’s not so difficult to help. We certainly have more experience handling these types of problems. At least we have enough scars to prove how not to deal with them.
Will Sharon agree? Is she going to trust us with such a sensitive issue for her?
“Daddy?” Sharon sounds embarrassed. “You said something about not having anything that we like to talk about.”
“Yes, Sharon.”
“It’s not true. I like to talk to you. You understand so much.”
“Remember it next time you ask me for something and I say ‘no.’ ”
That night, when Julie and I are sitting in comfortable, loving, silence, I return to Sharon’s clouds.
When she started with her complaints I didn’t see any connection between them. I don’t think Sharon did either. Nevertheless, the objective of each cloud came out to be the same. Friendship is what’s important to Sharon. That by itself is not a big surprise, we knew it long ago. But . . .
What would be the results of doing a similar analysis for myself? Suppose I pick three different, small but bothersome UDEs of my own? What will happen if for