The wise can see the difference between repairing a problem and fixing a problem. A repair is many times temporary whereas a fix can take more time, resources, and money.

Here is a story about a simple problem of transporting a crane across a bridge. When I read this story it reminds of the problems when people don’t understand the difference between a repairing vs. fixing a problem.

The story begins with a company that makes very large and very heavy pieces of equipment.

They had a special order for an especially large piece of equipment. They completed the piece of equipment and got it ready to ship to the client. In order to ship it to the client it had to pass over a bridge that was located very close to the plant where the piece of equipment was built.

As the piece of equipment was passing over the bridge, the bridge collapsed and the huge piece of equipment fell into the river. The company quickly went into action and rented a crane that was used to extricate the piece of equipment from the river and place it safely on the plant side of the bridge.

The city which owned the bridge quickly went into action building a new bridge relying on the assumed knowledge that the company would never try to go over the bridge with another piece of equipment that weighed so much.

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