Leah Gremm recently told me that she likes to challenge herself to learn one new word each day….whether that is a new English word, or in another language….she thinks it’s fun to throw these words into a workshop with her youth to broaden their understanding of their culture and other cultures. …So Leah…this post is for you!
This morning I was working on an online course that I’m enrolled in. I’m enrolled in the course for probably the same reason Leah learns new words…sometimes I take random online courses just to continue to challenge myself to learn new things. Today I learned about the German word einstellung. Einstellung directly translates to mean mindset. But a deeper meaning of the word is when a group or individual has such a deep knowledge in one particular area that they no longer can see alternative solutions to a problem…instead they just keep solving things the same way they have always solved a particular problem. Sound familiar? 
Several years ago Chuck reorganized us around Issue Teams in the hope that we would create multidisciplinary teams that could look at a specific problem from multiple different facets and actually solve the problem by addressing it from the multiple different viewpoints….he was trying to get us out of a too defined einstellung!
Today I challenge everyone of us to avoid einstellung and look at a problem from a different view….like a photographer that captures an everyday item from a completely different angle, it just makes life so much more interesting!