In the 1939 Wizard of Oz motion picture we are presented with a clear perspective of two characters’ moral qualities. The witch of the West is wicked, and the witch of the North is good. In the 2003 musical Wicked the same story is told from a different perspective. Both witches present a cocktail of inner beauty and emotional scarring that make them more human than abstractions of good and evil. Two narratives, and two very interpretations of the people involved.
In the gym I frequent two television monitors aside each other on the wall display news from two competing networks. Watching (not listening – my playlist is far more engaging) the two screens with scrolling “Breaking News” headlines a person might think the political news is being reported from two different planets. The same events, but two very different narratives and interpretations of the political world, at the extreme assigning labels of wicked and good. Choose your narrative and you probably have chosen your candidate. Don’t like either narrative – I’ll send you my playlist.
Our projects present a series of challenges and problems, and the possibility of applying different narratives to these challenges. A common narrative has been one that assigns responsibility for problems to individuals, attempting to separate the wicked from the good. Fortunately as it adopts not only Lean practices but also a Lean understanding the industry is moving away from this simplistic perspective toward understanding that we all possess that same cocktail that graces and scars the 2003 witches of Oz. That’s a narrative worth choosing.
