A classic math problem teaches an important lesson
I was talking with someone recently about The Fence Post problem in math.
Imagine you want to build a fence that is 24 long. Your fencing comes in 6-foot sections. How many vertical fence posts will you need to complete the fence?
If you approach this problem by dividing 24 by 6, you might come up with the answer of 4. As in, there will be 4 sections of fence, so we need 4 posts. But if you sink 4 posts in the ground six feet apart from each other, your fence will only be 18 feet wide.
This classic counting error happens when we forget to include the first post or the last post in our calculations. The actual number of posts needed is always one more than the number of fence sections needed.
When I think about The Fence Post problem, I think how we often rush to make changes without understanding where we are now or getting clear about where we want to end up. We forget about the first post or the last post and just start building a fence. This is especially a challenge in organizations. We assume the next thing has to be better than what we are doing now. But as Peter Senge shared in his groundbreaking book The Fifth Discipline, sometimes the cure can be worse than the disease.
My role as a coach is to help individual clients or teams explore current realities and visualize the successful attainment of their goals. Only then can we begin to fill in the spaces, knowing we are moving in the right direction. Only then can we be sure we won’t end up one post short of a complete fence.
