Landlubbers and the Smell of Land

If you’ve ever lived in or near, or spent time in a coastal community, you know the odors that emanate from the estuaries and tidal marshes, especially at low tide. Familiar though not altogether pleasant, the distinctive odors are emitted by the various creatures and microscopic life forms that inhabit such places through their life stages – living, dying, dead and decaying.

We typically associate that agglomeration of odors with all things related to being at the seaside. We think of it as “the smell of the sea.” But that’s just because of our point of view.

To a sea-going fisherman or sailor, someone who spends most of his days on the ocean, that same odor is “the smell of land.” As he sets sail and heads out to sea that odor fades away and the predominant sense is the clean salt air. In the same way, as we head inland away from the seashore, the aroma dies away and the smells of plants, flowers and life on land predominate.

At the point where the seaside aromas prevail, landlubbers and men of the sea share a common sensual experience. It’s the same odors, smelling the same to both, yet perceived and interpreted in opposite terms.

It’s all a matter of perspective and what one is most familiar with.

The same is true with life, including life within a business organization. People come to various challenges and opportunities with a set of biases that spring quite naturally from the environment in which they operate every day and the experiences they have there.

A typical company’s various functions present a case in point. Gather managers from different operations in a room to deal with a particular challenge and you’re likely to get perceptions that reflect their areas of expertise and focus.

The finance guy sees the challenge through a fiscal lens. The sales manager comes at it with the bias of the customer. The human resources manager sees the internal people implications. The supply chain manager infers the impact on parts inventory and pricing. And so on.

In the same way, people at different levels of the organization or geographic locations have similarly divergent perceptions of challenges and opportunities. It’s not at all unusual for headquarters-based people to see things considerably different from people in the field, at remote locations, facilities or factories.

Being on the ground dealing directly with customers is an entirely different experience than inhabiting the upper floors of the company’s head office. On the one hand, the person is confronting the real world impact of the company’s products and policies, while the other is operating largely within a theoretical construct. At the same time, however, the person at the headquarters office may see the nuances of challenges and opportunities that the front line guy misses because he’s too close to it.

Both smell the same odors, yet it’s land to one and sea to the other.

Both perceptions are right and both imply realities and insights that, together, add value to the corporation’s pursuit of its mission. Problems arise when that distinction is not understood by one another, not taken into account and not fully appreciated.

Breaking down the walls of perception to see through another’s eyes is key to the organization’s ability to fulfill its mission, to achieve collective superiority, as it should.

Instead of a pointless argument over what amounts to a semantic difference, it’s better to know and appreciate that your landlubber friend smells the same thing as you, even though he expresses it differently. It’s the first step in the process toward achieving collective excellence.