Batman
By Peter LloydThis is the story of the original bat man. People called him bat man, not because he protected them from harm, which he did, but because they thought he was crazy.
In the early 1900s, Dr. Charles Campbell was trying to find a cure for malaria. He never found it. Along the way, however, Campbell did build a huge 50-foot structure to attract bats to his home town of San Antonio, Texas.
Let me help you imagine how turn-of-the-century Texans felt about bats. Never mind the raw sewage in the stagnant irrigation ditches. They knew that according to Leviticus, the bat (along with the eagle, vulture, black vulture, red kite, any kind of black kite, any kind of raven, gull, any kind of hawk, all sorts of owls, the osprey, stork, any kind of heron, and the hoopoe) was evil.
And yet Dr. Campbell had determined that, where there are bats, there is little or no malaria. Because bats eat thousands and thousands of mosquitoes a day, before the mosquitoes have a chance to spread the dread disease. And when Dr. Campbell's bat roost was full of bats, San Antonio was virtually free of malaria. And yet, despite his life-long efforts, and after pouring everything he owned into his work, the people of San Antonio still heckled their crazy bat man.
Is there a bat man or woman where you work? Someone who's trying to change the way you've always done things? Are their ideas any crazier than building a bat roost? Could the result be as valuable as wiping out malaria?
Unless you put a few of their crazy ideas to the test, you'll never know. Why not take another look at the way you're looking at things? Even if the only thing you change is the way you've always been doing things, you're sure to prevent at least one deadly disease--mediocrity.
Bats, Mosquitoes and Dollars by Dr. Charles Campbell
Peter Lloyd is co-creator with Stephen Grossman of Animal Crackers, the breakthrough problem-solving tool designed to crack your toughest problems.