Dan Heath’s book ‘Upstream’ starts with a story which has come to my mind over and over. And every time it hits hard…

Two people standing next to a stream see a baby floating. One of them jumps and saves the baby. Immediately they see another baby floating. The other person jumps and saves. Then another one and one after other more come… They cannot keep up with it.

Finally one person says “There is someone upstream throwing babies into the stream, let me go and stop him… do what you can till then”

We all go over this situation so many times. we keep saving babies one after the other when the guy upstream keeps throwing them into the stream. The story hits hard. Sometimes we are the guy who stays back and saves babies and see some floating by. Sometimes we are the one who go to stop the guy…

Save or stop… We have to….

I write this today because I mentioned this in a long conversation I had today.

Yes we all need to save the babies, but we also need to stop the guy upstream, and in that process some babies will be unsaved. It is tough, it hits hard, but it is the fact.

If you have not read the 2020 book by Dan Heath “Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen”