I would like to share the story that I found very inspiring,
There was a large telephone company in the Midwest, so the story goes, that right after the Korean War developed a great pro-training supervisors of telephone operators. Graduates of the program were absolutely top-notch and the program was awarded many commendations, written up in magazines, and studied by other organizations. But there was a problem: The graduates were so good that as soon as a class graduated, most of them were contacted by other companies and hired away. A car company might need three or four supervisors for their communications staff; an oil company, five or six; the government of Canada, ten. Even other telephone companies were raiding their sister company for supervisors.The telephone company tried everything to keep its graduates—it gave them more money and fancy titles, it erected an “Honor Wall” where their names were inscribed, it furnished them expensive jackets to wear on the job, it sent their spouses flowers on every anniversary, it gave them extra vacation time—all to no avail. The other companies simply gave them more money and even fancier titles and even more vacation time. As you can imagine, the heads of the telephone company had many meetings trying to figure out ways to keep graduates from leaving. During one of these meetings, so the story goes, one of the managers lost his temper and shouted: “I’d like to chop their damn legs off—then they couldn’t leave.” Everybody laughed. Except one person, who said, “Yes, of course, that’s it.”“What’s it?” said his boss. “Why, we’ll hire only handicapped people in wheelchairs for the program,” he said. “We’ll redo all our entrance ways, our elevators, our toilets. We’ll furnish modified cars for them to drive to and from work. We’ll work with doctors and physical therapists to develop exercise programs. We’ll . . .”And that’s what they did.And the other companies no longer tried to hire the graduates away because they knew they’d have to redo all their entrance ways and elevators and toilets, and modify cars, and so on. And it all started because somebody suggested chopping “their damn legs off"—a very illogical solution. That is lateral thinking.
