Fish before the market opens

A fisherman's son in Yanbu has an idea. Instead of selling the morning catch to the dealers at the harbour, he will message thirty households in the neighbourhood at dawn with what came in, and drive it round to whoever replies before seven.

Everyone has an objection. His father thinks it is beneath them. His uncle thinks the dealers will stop buying if they hear. His mother asks who will sort the orders while he is still at sea.

He wanted them all to agree first. They will not, and that says nothing about whether the idea is good. Anything new begins with some of the people around it unconvinced. If he waits for every one of them to say yes, he will still be waiting next year.

It is also going to be a nuisance. Dawn messages, wet phones, a cool box in the back of a borrowed car, addresses that are really directions. If it were easy, someone on the harbour would be doing it already.

And it might not work. Thirty households might become five. The dealers might be annoyed for nothing.

None of this is unusual. Disagreement, inconvenience and uncertainty are not the obstacles standing in front of a new idea. They are the description of one.

So the useful question is not how to remove them. It is whether he is willing to go ahead with all three still in place. If he needs everyone on side, or needs it to be easy, or needs to know it will work, he should choose a different idea. If he does not, the first message goes out tomorrow before the sun is up.