There is a moment in the life of our kids in which they start questioning the story of Santa coming down the chimney. For those houses without chimney, the mystery is even bigger. How did he get through the door?
It’s a magic moment of aha! in which critical thinking suddenly appears in the kids. It should be celebrated because it may not last, particularly if they end up in management where many things, from automatic pilot thinking to accumulated MBA/Business School wisdom, and a good dose of busyness, prevent us from paying attention to the problem and instead we discuss the size of the hole in the chimney in comparison with the size of Santa (that is the nature of many business problems formulations that try to unpack a logic within an absurd situation)
Santa comes again bringing goodies every time that we relinquish our responsibility to think and look for solutions that other people have cooked. We outsource our mind.
Years ago there was a cartoon around showing two people saying that they could not think out of the box until they had an idea of the size of the box, the material of the box, the procurement of boxes and a timetable to be trained on boxes. Or something like that.
And if you think that Santa has a challenge going down those chimneys, imagine in my home country where we don’t have Santa but the Three Kings. Imagine for a second three camels and three guys being parachuted to the living room.
If your kid spontaneously solves the mystery and says, ‘I get it, they leave the camels at the door’, I am afraid, my friend, you have a high probability of having a future Change Manager/Project Manager in the family.