There’s an old short story called “Whose job is it?” that goes like this:

This is a story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody.

There was an important job to be done and Everybody was asked to do it.

Everybody was sure Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it.

Somebody got angry about that, because it was Everybody's job.

Everybody thought Anybody could do it but Nobody realised that Everybody wouldn't do it.

It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.

It used to be up on the wall in my secondary school many years ago. Its message of taking ownership and responsibility and not assuming others will do what you don’t want to do has stuck with me ever since.

It’s rather like the famous advice to be the change you wish to see happen. Litter doesn’t clean itself up. Broken things don’t fix themselves. It might be up to you. (see the Bystander effect)

The story seems to be a condensed version of a longer piece by Charles Osgood called "The Responsibility Poem," though I couldn't find an original source anywhere.

Also see: For want of a nail, the story spine, the Accountability Ladder, RACI

Whose job is it?

It's an old, old Eastern story about some blind men who encounter an elephant. As the blind make sense of what each feels it's also a memorable illustration of how our own views are shaped by our subjective experience and, as so often, that we don't see the full picture. In various versions the men may argue over what it is, convinced they themselves must be right, or collaborate to identify the elephant together.

Most of our experience is somewhat like this. We rarely see the whole truth. When we stay humble and accept others' experience we give ourselves the chance to learn a little more.

The blind and the elephant

When I look back at the LEGO sets of my youth compared to the LEGO sets of today, a few things are striking. Today’s is much cooler: the colours are better, the pieces are more interesting, and the sets are more clever (they also have a lot more weapons*). And the sets have their own characters: they’re not just nameless people in characterless towns—every set is full of people with names, expressions, backstories, personalities and goals. My observation, ahem, through our children, is that this makes it way more interesting to play with. It’s the characters and the story that make them so good now. A good part of that I think is also the shift in quality of expressions on the faces.

I am kind of in awe of LEGO faces. The number and variety and subtlety of expressions it’s possible to make with just a few small changes to a few small lines on a face I find truly astounding. This sketchplanation shows just a tiny bit of the variety from the LEGO Movies. Respect to the artists.

*5% of Lego boxes sold in 2001 contained Lego weapons. In 2014 that was 30% according to Bartneck C, Min Ser Q, Moltchanova E, Smithies J, Harrington E (2016) Have LEGO Products Become More Violent? PLoS ONE 11(5): e0155401.

LEGO faces

Kenn Adams’s story spine is a wonderfully simple and flexible backbone for creating or analysing stories. I learned it from Dan Klein at Stanford as a fun improvising game: standing in a circle each person in turn takes on the next step of the story spine making up what happens. You’ll effortlessly produce some fascinating and amusing stories. We would extend the middle section as many times as felt natural to lead to the climax. An optional extension to the original spine was to add a final step of stating the moral of the story.

I have found the story spine very useful for coming up with on the spot bedtime stories. Also a fun game at the pub.

the second rule of improv: be spontaneous

Watch Dan Klein in action at TEDxReset 2014

The story spine

There’s a surprising amount of wisdom in A. A. Milne’s classic stories of Winnie-the-Pooh. If you haven’t read them for a long time, you could do much worse than try them again. As one small example, I find there’s a lot of Owl Speak around as we get older, where we could all probably benefit from a dose of Pooh’s simplicity. Owl never uses a short, simple word when a long and complicated one would do. For example, in one revealing exchange, Owl explains:

“Well, the customary procedure in such cases is as follows.”

“What does Crustimoney Proseedcake mean?” said Pooh.

…”It means, the Thing to Do.” says Owl.

We learn more and more Owl Speak the more time we spend in school, only to have to work to remove it when we are older.

Both quotes are from The House at Pooh Corner. Or, if you prefer to have the wisdom called out, you could try The Tao of Pooh, by Benjamin Hoff.

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Category: story