EDITOR'S ANGLE | FALL 2010 EFFECTInvesting in Recovery: Hydraulic Stilts
by Paul D. PfeifferI recently read an article that suggested the key to our country’s economic recovery was to tap our uniquely American creative spirit. And though most can appreciate creativity in the abstract, few genuinely welcome it, because encouraging creativity is rarely convenient. It forces us out of our routines; it causes disruptions. So, how do we tap this valuable raw material and continue to nurture it for the future? If we pay attention, opportunities to encourage next generation creativity arise often.
Elowyn joined the project as an experienced stilts builder.
I cram too many activities into my weekends. I’d love to linger over a cup of coffee and watch monarchs flutter around our swamp milkweed, but there are soccer practices, baseball games, a menu to plan, screens to repair, and a dog to run. So, it was difficult to fully embrace a project my son dreamed up one Sunday morning. Actually, he’d been formulating plans for this venture for a couple weeks and updating me regularly. Though I try to promote creativity in my kids, it was hard for me to encourage this one.
Hydraulic stilts—I sat down with Gabriel to discuss the details. To be honest, I hoped to dissuade him. I wanted him to think this through and agree to be rational, safe, pragmatic, and dull—like me. But he’d done his research and sketched out a rough idea of how to make them. It involved lumber, two feet of PVC pipe, six racquetballs, and lubrication of some sort, oil, soap—something slimy. The stilts were supposed to bounce—I tried to keep him grounded—we weren’t going to be looking at 10-inches of vertical leap—maybe a couple. He was fine with that.
Gabriel is persuasive and pulls you into his schemes with an impressive smattering of cold fusion references and fluid dynamics terms he picked up from his college-age cousin. But the kid is 11 years old, so the design and much of the underlying “science” for this project was, well … incomplete.
I grudgingly agreed to take him to the hardware store, and afterwards, set up the materials in his “workshop,” which used to be my garage.
It was a hot, humid Sunday, and as I toted power tools from the basement, my wife asked how it was going.
“Well,” I said. “The design is a pretty shaky, and … I just hadn’t planned on spending all Sunday building stilts.”
She paused, sage-like for a moment, then said, “Don’t look at it as building stilts all day, look at it as spending the afternoon with your son.”
Insightful, I had to admit.
“Hydraulic stilts,” I said aloud, as I unloaded tools.
“Doesn’t ‘hydraulic’ mean water?” asked his sister Elowyn, who wandered into the garage and immediately conveyed a look of betrayal. She’d been trying to get me to build stilts for a year. She didn’t hide her annoyance that I’d agreed to join Gabriel’s whacked-out hydraulic scheme, when I only got as far as buying building materials for her standard stilts.
I thought this might become a sibling rivalry issue, which was just one more reason I was reluctant to get involved in the first place. The fact is, I didn’t really want to build stilts—not standard, circus, super, mini, or hydraulic! I wanted to do other things with my Sunday—fix door knobs, make sure the toilet flushed, maybe even read the newspaper.
But there I stood with two kids who wanted to do something none of their friends had ever done. With a few deft maneuvers, I transformed the situation from Gabriel co-opting his sister’s building materials, to her joining the project as part-owner. Elowyn had been a camp counselor this summer, so she was an experienced stilts builder. I handed her the power drill.
We spent much of the day troubleshooting. We slid the stilt into the PVC on top of the racquetballs, but the balls kept locking up in the tube because they were a little too large in diameter and formed an airtight seal. So we drilled holes along the side to release the air and encourage bounce. We then attached the PVC with carriage bolts, but the motion was stiff. By mounting a handball on the bottom of the stilt and holding it in place with PVC cap, we added some spring to its otherwise disappointing lift.
Although the result of our tinkering was the Frankenstein of the stilt world, it was close enough to Gabriel’s vision that he was not only satisfied, he was excited. His hydraulic stilts would not launch him onto the roof, but he’d created something tangible out of an idea that had only existed in his imagination.
It was dark when we stopped for dinner. Gabriel was tired, but he couldn’t hide his satisfaction. He’d stuck with this long project, constantly adjusting his plans and execution. He easily accepted his new partner, recognizing her useful skills and experience. His instincts were good.
Though our time investment was large, the results were bigger than a pair of odd looking stilts. Sometimes the return on your investment is more about relationships. Sometimes the greater value comes from the process of building and experimentation; from encouraging enthusiasm rather than squashing it. Sometimes investing has nothing to do with getting anything tangible in return.
The business equivalent of making hydraulic stilts is this: “I want to try something different. I planned it out, but we’ll have to adapt as we go, and actually, I’m not sure if this is ever going to work—do I have your support?”
How leaders answer that question may determine the extent to which we will use our distinctively American competitive advantage to regain our economic health. It may be the difference between a future that is relatively safe and one that’s dynamic.
As Gabriel was stretching out on his bed that night, he became still, staring off through the ceiling, silent. Then he said, “I got another idea … ”