Find Great People to Think With

True North | Summer 2021

Think for yourself! How many times did we hear that when we were young? Of course, this is a life skill we are taught from an early age but as we mature as human beings on the planet Earth, we start to rely more on our muscle memory acquired from inherently knowing right from wrong. And we develop the ability to make quick, accurate decisions based on a catalogue of events throughout our lifetime. Rapid cognition enables us to accomplish mundane tasks and tackle life’s most common misadventures based on past experiences.

However, sometimes problems are really hard. 😟

One of my early educators said something to me that has stuck with me my whole life. “You don’t always have to think for yourself. Instead, find great people to think with.” Now, this would not have worked for Tom Hanks in Castaway but even he, in the end, sought council in a volleyball. So, for much of my career I have surrounded myself with, by design or good fortune, great people with whom to think. This requires trust. It requires the shedding of egos. And there is no place for hubris in the art of collaboration. There’s nothing more satisfying than when a good idea gets better, and this works best when several people lean in with their minds focused on the same goal.

I have the great privilege of working with hundreds of great thinkers at Cansel. They make our company better. They make your company better. And most importantly, they make me look good - a herculean task that they accomplish without fanfare nor want of reward.

If you are still with me, you are probably thinking to yourself, “Enough! Who are these great thinkers you speak of?” With that, I am pleased to introduce several new contributors to the 2021 True North summer edition. Jonathan Calve is a licensed Quebec Land Surveyor and a member of Cansel’s professional services team. Jonathan has written an article on the tools in Trimble Business Center that help prevent data loss. Stephen Vickers has his Chartered Land Surveyor’s designation from the UK and he has been immersed in the 3D scanning world for over twenty years. Stephen joined Cansel in 2017 and has written an article on the true On-Site Registration system in the FARO S series Laser Scanners. Akram Afifi’s article on CAN-FLOW outlines how Cansel’s data management system can help surveyors and engineers integrate industry best practices. And finally, Rowland Chen from Trimble contributes an article on their T4D automated monitoring system which now integrates many IoT sensors through their strategic partnership with Worldsensing. Rowland is Trimble’s monitoring sales manager living and working in Colorado. Thanks, Rowland!

If you Google “find great people to think with”, your search engine may return the following: Do you mean think for yourself? Do not be fooled by this. As much as Google may like us to believe, we are not a collection of predictable algorithms. In high school, finding people to think with didn’t always work out for me. Finding great people made all the difference.

Have an accurate summer, everyone!

Pat Hills
Editor and Technical Marketing Director
Cansel