Around the beginning of the year, The New York Times had an article about things to try. One of those things was adult paint by numbers. So, what the heck, I decided to give it a whirl. I haven’t painted in a while and thought it would be a good way to get back into it. Only, it turns out to be much harder and much more detailed.
The kit comes with brushes, a numbered canvas and paint. No instructions. Just pick a brush and match the number on the paint to the canvas. And there are a lot of very small parts to paint. The thing is, if you’ve painted before, you know part of it is learning to mix and blend paints. You learn how to use the brush to create different shapes. And you look at the big picture, not just the little area with the number on it.
The process was a good reminder of the challenges in business today. We give people a minute task to focus on, but they don’t know the big picture. And each piece stands alone rather than blending it in seamlessly to the rest. Without the proper training, the tool is used, but not in a way that it was designed to be used.
As it turns out, taking each piece individually and not being able to use the tools to the full potential of their design is much more time consuming and results in an inferior product.