Digging Holes: Lateral Thinking and the Emergency Mine Rescue
Watching the “Emergency Mine Rescue” special on NOVA we saw lots of metaphors for Fishbird: The rescue set out to do the impossible – it had never been done before and no one had ever lasted, trapped in a mine that long. They were unstoppable – faced with failures, upset, and breakdowns the rescue effort never let the problems stop them. They were committed to the outcome not the path – there wasn’t one “right” way to save the miners, multiple tunnels were dug simultaneously. They dug many holes – as it was said in New Think: The Use of Lateral Thinking by Edward de Bono: “one goes on generating as many approaches as one can even after one has found a promising one.” We are reminded that “You cannot dig a hole in a different place by digging the same hole deeper.”
