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Building
Pyramids
By WILLIAM J
PRICE
Saluki Head Coach
The other night I was
watching a documentary about how the pyramids were built. The producers of
the program decided to mix speculation with the actual construction of a
small pyramid. Presumably, problems encountered would be the same as those
that the builders of the big pyramids would have run into centuries ago.
It didn’t take long to
realize that the hardest part of the whole endeavor would be setting the
upper layers of stone in place with the most difficult of all being the last
stone itself. Getting the base together was also hard but in a different
way. As any construction worker will tell you, the order in which you do
things matters. Moving a 2 or 3 ton stone was only part of the problem
because when building a pyramid where does one begin? The work at the bottom
was hard physically and conceptually because there was no obvious
way to begin. At the top the what to do was much clearer. But the
work didn’t get easier. Positioning the last stones was even more difficult
because the way it was done at the lower levels wouldn’t work near the top.
There just wasn’t as much room to muscle and finesse the stones into
position.
When the time came to place
the last stone many ideas about how to do it were rejected and the workers
opted for the simplest yet riskiest method, they lifted the stone and
carried it to the top. Physically, it was the most difficult part of the
project. Near the end though they all shared the common language of pyramid
building, they knew they could do it and they knew exactly where the last
stone had to go. No one would begin setting the stone down in the wrong
spot—there was no doubt about where the right place was. All activity was
focused on a singular, well understood outcome.
When we set goals it’s not
always clear where the starting point is or what to do first. A goal
provides a very clear end point but in the beginning the direction one takes
to reach that point is fuzzy. The pyramiders tried several ways of getting
the lower stones into place. They pulled, slid, tumbled and levered them
into position. Each way worked, some better than others. But as the pyramid
rose they had fewer choices about lifting stones and their actions became
focused and group oriented.
We move toward our own
goals in much the same way. The first few steps can be any number of things
but as we get close, the what to do becomes crystal clear. The work
never gets much easier—lifting that last stone in place was possibly the
hardest part of the whole effort—but seeing what has to be done does get
easier. As we get closer to achieving a goal it’s easier to see result,
purpose and payoff of the last bit of work that’s required.
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