My 10 year old daughter has been home sick the past few days. It hasn’t been anything too serious- apparently a virus that has caused her temperature to bounce up as high as 103.6 and made her feel very sick. She is, however, ordinarily very active, and when she has to lie still her natural exuberance shows up in non-stop talking. She Rick rolled me several times by email, made me watch all of the new Is It A Good Idea To Microwave This? videos, and repeated the punchlines to several thousand SpongeBob Squarepants shows.

So I will have to admit that I was half-listening to her when she tossed this at me, and I don’t know if she made it up or ripped it from the headlines. She said, “Escalators can’t break. [pause for effect] They just turn into stairs.”

Well, that made me pay a little attention. It just struck me that what she said was so true. If I saw an escalator that wasn’t running, because of my mindset I might walk by in search of an alternate way to ascend, even if it turned out to be a staircase. Why is that?

It made me think. I could look at it as an analogy to adapting to a changing real estate market place. I could think of it as a commentary about learning to master new marketing skills. More broadly, it is about trying to overcome blind spots and habits, both of which keep you wearing down the grass in the same circle.

How often do I walk by a paused escalator, not realizing that it’s really a staircase?

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