Last May, I accompanied my dad to his hometown province in Cagayan Valley. For some unknown reason, my dad purchased a lot eight years ago in his hometown that was not as progressive. Little did we know that he had this vision that his province would one day be as developed as the neighboring provinces.
After more than eight years of not visiting my dad’s hometown, I was surprised to see the progress. There was a Puregold Supermarket already and some few developments in the center of the town.
The lot dad purchased was turned into the biggest bargain center in town. Imagine Divisoria crammed in a 600-800 square meter store. It was the first in the province that rivaled the public market and opened innovations in the town. It’s rethinking the design. Nobody thought of putting a shopping center all these years. The fear was that nobody would buy since it was not as progressive. But the concerns of business people were proved wrong when the building became the town’s focal point.
Rethinking Designs is what I would call it. The town center was designed for the longest time to have mini-stores or what we call sari-sari stores; besides; it would be the drugstore, the community basketball court, and the Catholic church. But because somebody was brave enough to start something different, the center’s design changed the town’s design.
Contrast this innovation with this picture I took in our house at Tuao. It’s the picture of the bathroom of our home.
When I use the shower in this house, the bathroom floor becomes wet. This is because the water from the shower goes to the hole and makes the entire bathroom floor wet. So I wondered why the shower room was designed to have a hole? So I asked around, and this is the answer I got.
For many years, all shower areas in our province had a hole designed because drainage was so bad that water got stuck in the shower area. In some provinces, showers are a rarity. Instead, you have a bathroom design where water used for bathing comes out of a hole so water won’t get stuck in the bath area. Unfortunately, the people who worked on our house were stuck in a design used for the longest time without considering how a modern bathroom works. The workers failed to adapt to the change, thus ending up with a flawed strategy.
Designing your dreams and goals entails more than work. It takes deep thinking and strategic insight before execution. Unfortunately, some people tend to execute things without thinking of their implications. The saying goes, “We’ve always done it this way.”
That kind of thinking might not be healthy for any organization or business. Instead, a leader must rethink how things are done and designed before executing. The 2020-2021 pandemic has taught us to rethink many things, and we need to grab those learning opportunities to redesign things that are no longer working.
I encourage you to look back at some of the things you are facing as a leader and review the goals you have in your organization. Then, with the vision given to you, how do I design or redesign it to stay true to the vision and become a more effective and efficient leader?