The first task, on getting my first posting, as an Assistant Superintendent of Police, was to count the thousands of rounds of ammuntion that were stored in the unit armoury. They were counted one by one. Though I had six people assisting me, I had to count eaach and every round to ensure their exact number; I am the designated custodian. One round missing, you can expect a suspension as one round is sufficient to take one life, or if it is a .303 round, perhaps two. It would take me the whole day to do the counting and the job was quite exasperating. But when I went for the next inspection, I knew better. I asked my colleagues to arrange them in tens of tens of tens. Each block would be 1000, arranged in ten rows. But each row is divided into blocks of ten rounds. If I can represent a block of ten as one single plus sign, the arranagement of four thousand looked like: + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + I finished counting in less than thirty minutes. Counting the rounds by rounding the counts, so to say. I realised our eyes are capable of seeing things much faster when they are arranged. I actually took only two minutes to see how many rounds were there . 28 minutes were used to verify my visual percepts were correct and also to ensure there were no decoys in place. I did the latter part by taking into my hands random rounds. I began to understand why were those armies arranged on rows and columns as they were readying for the battles. That was a good lesson in supervision. Call it bird's eye view or macro perspective or what you like. But this is an essential ingredient of managing anything. #LessonsInLeadership