It's only a little! 

The Stuck Low Balloon

We walked to the nearby annual village fair in India with our 4-year-old daughter in a stroller. We bought her a yellow gas balloon and tied the string to the stroller. She enjoyed playing with it. After entering the house she didn't care for it.

When I released the balloon inside the house, it promptly floated up to the ceiling. The tail end of the string was a few feet above the floor. A train of thoughts ran through my mind while looking at the yellow balloon with the white string hanging down. 

Why did the balloon go up instead of falling like all the other things? Because the weight of the air displaced by the inflated balloon was more than the combined weight of the balloon, gas, and string. The weight of helium is 14% of air for equal volume. If I attach a longer and thicker string, the balloon will come down. Then I can trim the the string. The balloon will inch up every time I trim. 

I can repeat this process. At some point, the upward force would match the downward force. When that happens, the balloon will neither go up nor down. I can keep the 'magic' balloon at any height! I never saw a gas balloon mid-air without being tied down. I was hooked on this fancy idea.

I began the experiment. I attached a heavier string to the balloon. It descended a few feet. A few inches of the string was lying flat on the floor. I cut a little of the string. The balloon went up a little. After a few cuts, less than an inch of the string touched the floor. After a few tiny cuts, only the tip of the string touched the floor. I was excited at the prospect of seeing the balloon and string suspended mid-air! Then, I cut just a bit of the string. Guess what happened?

The balloon soared up in a wink and stuck to the ceiling. What a disappointment! 

It was as if the balloon broke the spell keeping it low. 

My dream didn't come true. 

I repeated the experiment. I added more string, brought it down, and cut the tiniest string towards the end. I couldn't keep the balloon and string suspended mid-air even after multiple careful trials. Either the balloon touched the ceiling or the string touched the floor. 

Had I experimented in the open, the balloon would have gone sky-high! 

I accepted the reality. I couldn't match the upward and downward forces with the precision needed to suspend the balloon mid-air. 

The unexpected failure of my dream set me thinking. Does this have a message for life? I think so. What is it? 

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Under-performance in real life

We may worry about our own or someone's performance stuck low. We may imagine that it needs a major effort to boost it. 

But, as the balloon experiment showed, a small deficiency of one or more ingredients of success may be holding it down. Who knows? 

When we identify and correct such a deficiency, the performance may soar high without any major effort or investment.   

We need to work on two fronts to boost the performance and keep it at a high level. 

1. Guess the most likely causes for low performance based on past experience. Then, take corrective actions to boost the performance. This is a trial and error process. It will be most productive when done with the team. 

2. To sustain superior performance, we need to practice 'Continuous improvement' as a way of life. This approach was developed in Japan under the name 'Kaizen' and practiced company-wide. 

I had many professional successes in permanently ending multiple recurring and major problems. The secret was to find the 'little' root causes by reliable observations, fearless questioning of the popular assumptions, and team involvement from the operator or the technician to the head of the department.

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The dusty mirror

Imagine a beautiful mirror covered with a thin layer of dust. You go to see your face but can't see it. You will feel frustrated and walk away. What has made the mirror useless? 

The culprit is a thin layer of dust particles. You can bring all the offending particles together and hold them between your thumb and index finger.

The weight of the dust particles is nothing compared with the mirror. But those particles made the majestic mirror useless! 

Do we need to buy a new mirror? No. Do we need to do a lot of work to restore the mirror to its glory?  No. 

We need to spray a little water on the mirror and wipe it with a cleaning cloth. How long will this take? A couple of minutes!

Let us apply this analogy to people - ourselves and others. Persistent negative thoughts, words, and actions may be damaging our performance and image. We might have got used to them. 

When we put a little effort and, remove those tiny negatives, our performance may shine in a short time!

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It's only a tiny drop

Imagine a dinner plate placed before you. It is filled with your favorite foods. You can't wait to eat. 

Then someone told you that a drop of invisible poison fell on it. You are now afraid to even touch the food. Your appetite is gone.

The weight of the drop of poison is insignificant compared with that of the food. But it destroys the value of the food.

Let us bring this idea to real life. 

An inappropriate word, a disrespectful gesture, or an insensitive response may poison the precious value of a person or an organization. 

In the course of our work, we notice insignificant lapses or errors all the time. They may be like drops of poison. We can ignore them and incur damages over time. Or we can treat them as warning bells, make a note, and remove them systematically.  

We can make this preventive practice a part of daily life. 

This way, we can protect the value of the individual, the family, and the organization.

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