Founded in 1703 by Peter the Great, St. Petersburg was built as Russia’s new capital. Within 10 years Peter the Great built a city that would rival any capital in Europe. Elegant Russian baroque palaces lined crisscrossing waterways that gave the city the title “Venice of the North.” It was truly a building marvel of eighteenth-century Europe.
Earlier on, the city’s master planners had drawn up the design for every street and highway into a comprehensive master plan. To accommodate the layout of the new city, numerous large rocks had to be removed. However, one particularly large boulder lay right in the middle of one of this sparkling new city’s major avenues.
As good city governments do, the administrators solicited bids for the removal of this massive boulder. Because labor-saving modern equipment and explosives didn’t yet exist, the bids came in much too high. This left the city planners with a huge problem and no foreseeable solution. How could they move this giant stone without paying a fortune?
As they pondered what to do, a lowly peasant presented himself and offered to remove the boulder for a much lower price than any of the other bids. A debate ensued. How could this simple man succeed where so many giants of engineering had failed?
Having nothing to lose, the city fathers gave him the job and stood back with smug grins.
The next day the peasant showed up with a small army of other peasants carrying shovels. Right next to the rock, they dug a hole deeper than the boulder’s height. Next, they simply nudged the huge rock into the hole. They had made their pit deep enough that it swallowed the rock entirely, leaving not an inch above street level. Then they filled in dirt around the edges and carted the leftovers off in wheelbarrows to a dump outside the city.
By thinking outside the box, these creative peasants were able to solve a problem none of their supposed intellectual superiors could figure out.
This story should encourage and inspire us all! It doesn’t matter who you are or what you consider your talents or strengths, you can make a difference, you can help to change your culture and atmosphere, you can attempt the new. You can create change! You can make things happen! If you’re a change champion, anything is possible!
No comments:
Post a Comment