Half-Full or Half-Empty?

When optimism is seen as complacency

I’ve always felt the need to accentuate the positive, something I think I picked up from my mother. In tense situations she would always interject, “Isn’t it a beautiful day?” This usually generated laughter and reduced tensions. Although this seems like an admirable quality, I discovered one day that it shouldn’t be reduced to a knee-jerk reaction.

Twenty-three years ago, after my factory had received some press recognition as a Shingo Prize (now the Shingo Institute) recipient, requests for plant tours began to roll in. In 1990 there weren’t yet many tour sites available, so the visits were plentiful; we referred to ourselves jokingly as Tours R Us. In truth, we were at the early stages of our improvement curve, but still a little farther along than many factories. We accepted the tours because it gave our employees a chance to learn by teaching.

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Comments

Half-full of water and half-full of air

I guess it depends on what you mean by "full" but I have used the phrase "It's half-full of water and half-full of air" for many years. (BTW, I think the SnorgTee folks even have a shirt with that expression now.) For an interesting perspective on "dead metaphors" see Harvard Business Review, September 2003, "The Fruitful Flaws of Strategy Metaphors" by Tihamer von Ghyczy.

Full of what? from the realist

Optimism can be interjected without complacency. To use your glass half full analogy, the reality is the glass is always full. partially with air and partially with liquid (let's start with water. substitute your favorite beverage as approriate). Using air (or "empty") as a proxy for what is yet to be done and the water (or "fullness") as proxy for what has been done well, the glass becomes the measurement tool to gage both how far we have come and how far we need to go.

Then, if we are half-full, we are well on the way to solving the issue at hand, full of optimism and no where near complacent.

At least until the glass overflows or someone suggests a smaller glass.

Follow-up Question

Bruce,

Did the issues that Eddie raise get successfully resolved? Thank you.

Matt

answer to the question

An engineer's answer to the question would be: the glass volume is 50% full, 50% empty; thus eliminating any subjective feeling-oriented view of the glass content.