I hate blogs that start posts with “In my last post…”. However, in my almost last post I rambled on about mountaineering in one of the worlds loosest metaphors. Well guess what – another story from the hills, but one I was reflecting on in a negotiation this morning.
The mountain in the picture above is the Matterhorn, which as some of you may know, sit above the lovely village on Zermatt in the Swiss Alps. Zermatt has been a farming village for hundreds of years, living in the shadow of this tooth on the horizon.
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, humans, particularly the British, decided it would be jolly nice to get to the top of all these large snowy objects that rose up in the middle of the continent. The Matterhorn, striking in appearance as it is, obviously gathered a lot of interest, but no one could work out how it would be possible to climb such steep terrain – every ridge looked vertical or overhanging!
Then one summer, the most persistent and controversial of aspirants decided to cross to Zermatt from the Italian village of Breuil – a route often used by shepherds but not by climbers. To his surprise, he saw the Matterhorn from a very different view:
As you can see – the ridge that looked so vertiginous from Switzerland, looks like a 45 degree stroll from Italy.
We base our values, our thoughts, our hopes, and our desires on assumptions we and our environment make. These assumptions are the biggest limiting factor to our development and improvement. If we always look at our problems from Switzerland then they will always look impenetrable – but if every once in a while we climb to that other side of the valley, we may be surprised by what we see.
This morning a set of potential customers we upset as they had read a contract in the frame of mind “they are trying to screw us – lets spot how…”. It is amazing how worked up they got. I explained to them what I was trying to achieve in the contract, and suggested if they had any suggestions on how to do this then they we welcome. The mood brightened, and we agreed it all in 20 minutes. There is always a better view somewhere!
p.s. The story of the the first accent of the Matterhorn is a first class adventure story and mystery saga – highly recommended! The Ascent of the Matterhorn
