06 Aug The Little Fly
A few years ago, Amsterdam Airport Schiphol had a problem that was costing far more time and money than anyone wanted. The area around the urinals in the men’s restrooms always seemed to need attention.
The cleaning staff scrubbed the floors. They posted signs asking people to please be more careful. They scrubbed some more. They posted some more signs. Nothing seemed to change.
Then the head of the cleaning staff remembered something from his time in the Dutch army. One of the latrines had a tiny black dot in the porcelain, near the drain. It wasn’t intentional, just a small imperfection in the finish. But over time he had noticed something curious. The area around that particular urinal was always the cleanest of them all.
No one had told people to aim there. They just did.
That memory sparked an idea.
What if they recreated the same effect? Something that would naturally draw a person’s attention in the moment, just as the black dot had done. And what if, instead of a black dot, it was something almost universally disliked? They decided it was worth a try and hired someone to engrave a tiny black fly inside every urinal.
The change was almost immediate. The floors stayed cleaner, cleaning costs dropped, and the amount of time the janitorial staff spent cleaning the restrooms fell dramatically.
Without realizing it, the janitor had stumbled onto something important about human behavior. When people are given something to aim at, they usually do. Where our attention goes influences what happens next.
The same principle shows up in conversations every day, especially the ones where we’re helping someone make a change. Those conversations are built one question at a time.
Every question we ask is an invitation to look in a particular direction.
Ask, “Why haven’t you changed?” and attention naturally turns toward the reasons they haven’t. “What’s getting in the way?” invites someone to gather obstacles. “Why can’t you…?” sends the mind searching for limitations.
But ask, “How would you like things to be different?” and attention turns toward the future they hope for. “What’s the downside of how things are now?” invites them to consider what this is costing them. “What feels possible right now?” invites them to consider what they might already be capable of.
Like the little fly engraved inside the urinal, a good question doesn’t contain the answer. It simply points attention in a helpful direction.