Yesterday a couple of cohorts and I were teaching a class on how to do IT audits of change management. This consisted of some lecturing, followed by a few role plays in which auditors interviewed us acting out the parts of a CIO and a Director of IT Operations.
During the exercise, we noticed how large groups of people can hear the same thing and emerge with different pictures of "the truth."
After the class, one of the other instructors said it reminded him of a story he heard once:
A shoe company sent two salesmen to a remote part of Africa to scope out the market.
The first one comes back and says, "It's a terrible market - nobody wears shoes."
The other one comes back and says, "It's a great market - nobody wears shoes!"
A good story, whether it's true or not. Then, on my morning drive today I was listening to "Getting Things Done Fast" and David talks about how you sometimes have to "tune yourself to a different frequency" to change the outcomes your getting.
A good reminder to reflect on what filters might be affecting our results.