The great philosopher, naturalist and leading American Transcendentalist, Henry David Thoreau, when not scripting reflections of his life at Walden Pond, discovered how to build a better pencil by adding clay as a binder to the graphite and created the first smear-free pencil and helped make the Thoreau company into America’s leading pencil maker.
March 30th is National Pencil Day, commemorating the day in 1858 when Philadelphia immigrant, Hymen Lipman, patented his invention for a pencil with an eraser on top, the same pencil that created many writers’ thoughts, engineers’ designs, and students’ math problems.
And why did an eraser deserve a day of recognition?
The simple eraser teaches an invaluable lesson: Nobody’s perfect!
From this simple rubber solution to address human error, we have evolved from whiteout through to the electronic solution- the delete button.
Hopefully, we all work hard to ensure that our ideas are perfect, our company will perform flawlessly day in and day out, our packages arrive on time, our customers are always happy, our invoices are paid on time, and our bottom line positively reflects these goals.
But sometimes it is necessary to bring out the eraser, physically or metaphorically, and make adjustments, possibly scrap the whole idea and start over. We must all be flexible and when it’s time to make changes- in ideas- systems- team alignment- be kind to yourself. Look at the ideas or situation from a new perspective. Ask your team for their input. Evaluate new options and opportunities. Be willing to look and listen. Pencil out new solutions and see if these align to your core values, your end game, your raison d’etre. It may take a few iterations, but that is why we have erasers.
Nobody is perfect.
Gillian