Uncommon Company

Courtesy frederickcountymd.gov

When working for a common goal, you may find yourself in uncommon company.

My wife and I recently decided to stay at home and watch a movie together (something we hadn't done for awhile), and we decided, via a coin-flip, to watch the movie Big Miracle.  Now for those of you who are unfamiliar with the movie, it involves the plight of a family of Gray Whales trapped by the ever-increasing arctic ice.  This true story highlights how people, and nations, who were normally at odds with each other came together to help these stranded animals.  One exchange in the movie that stands out is when a Greenpeace volunteer and an oil-drilling executive who were both helping the whales each confess that the other person was not so easy to hate as they used to be.

As I thought about this film, I couldn't help but think about a story told by Carl Wilkens in his book I'm not leaving. (you can find my review for the book here).  He told the story of how a group of orphans fled their orphanage to avoid being murdered.  Wilkens discovered that when the children left they took only the clothes on their backs.  He then decided to go back and retrieve their personal items, and upon arriving he stumbled upon a group of armed men looting the orphanage.  After a very tense negotiation it was decided that the orphans should have their things, and the very men the orphans were running from helped Wilkens load the various items into a truck to be delivered to the children.  A surreal moment indeed, but an ideal illustration of what can happen when people work together for a common goal.

While you or I may not find ourselves in such extreme situations or in such unusual company, whenever we work on a project bigger than ourselves, we may find ourselves working with people with very different views than ours.  We should not allow these differences to derail our goals, but rather we should allow these differences to enhance both the project and ourselves.

Have you ever worked on a project that brought you in contact with uncommon company?  Feel free to share your story in the comment section.