Where is the 'Mystery Spot' in your office?

This year marks my eighth in California, but yesterday was my first trip to one of the state's most famous attractions. As Santa Cruz resident, David Beach, explained...

"It seems, in California, you have the Golden Gate Bridge, Yosemite, Disneyland, and the Mystery Spot. It's a phenomenon on many levels. First, this thing has been open since 1939—every day. Second it is hugely popular for Japanese, German, and Indian tourists. Like crazy popular!

...You see balls roll uphill, water flows backwards, you can stand on the wall, people shorter than other people look to be the same height, and you can lean over Matrix-style without falling down."

Like any good knowledge-addict, I hit the Internet before the trip, and I knew what was really going on. William Prinzmetal, UC Berkeley's adjunct associate professor of psychology, had explained it all...

"All the visual illusions in the Mystery House derive from the fact that the house is tilted. You know the house is tilted, but you don't know how much. Everything is tilted. You can't look outside and get a horizon, so you think that what you see is right."

Prinzmetal is an expert on perception who has been to the Mystery Spot over a dozen times. Although he has studied these illusions in depth, he said his visual perceptions still are distorted every time he enters the house.

Visiting the house, I can relate.

Knowing the theories and understanding the facts, I was still fiercely debating with myself as to what I was actually seeing. That's when it occurred to me: there are Mystery Spots in everyday life—especially at the office!

How many times have situations looked one way on the surface, only to be revealed as something totally different when all of the layers were removed?

This is why managers who shoot-from-the-hip fail more than fifty percent of the time. With technology changing the world daily, what was the obvious solution last year may not be this year.

Without asking the right questions, you will never know the secrets of your mystery spots, and you will walk through life like the emperor with no clothes.

Stand everything on it's head and look at everything from different angles, and most-often you'll expose your team's mystery spots for what they truly are.