What's The Smallest Thing You Will Do Today To Find a "3rd Alternative"?

I am reading a Stephen Covey book called The 3rd Alternative. I have not finished it, but what I have read so far is very compelling. The basic premise is that there are always going to be radically opposed viewpoints in any given situation of great importance--and that by listening carefully to both sides, it is possible to propose a third alternative.

This third alternative might combine the needs of both sides. Then again, it might be a solution that is so "out of the box" that it completely jumps over both and opens a completely new way to look at things.

One example given was that of a musician's daughter who came home in tears one day, toting her violin. The little girl said that she was no longer allowed to practice her music at school.
The musician was outraged. She spent a night furious, angry that anyone would rob her daughter of the chance to practice her violin at school.

But by the next morning, instead of marching angrily to the school board, she went to the girl's teacher and found out that due to testing mandates, there was no longer enough time for music. "We must spend all our time teaching the basics, like reading and math," the teacher said, also in tears.

The musician thought about now attacking the government, but instead said to herself, "Music is math." She and the teacher began to talk, and asked--what if we could teach music THROUGH all the other subjects? The musician started to volunteer what time she could and together, she and the teacher taught every subject using music.

They taught poetry as song. They taught fractions as notes of music with different duration. They taught history by teaching about composers.*

They found a 3rd Alternative, and it worked.

Life is neither all one thing or another. We blend. And in the blending, we find new solutions. I highly recommend the book--and the kind of thinking in it.

What's The Smallest Thing You Will Do Today To Find A 3rd Alternative?

*story above taken from The 3rd Alternative: Solving Life's Most Difficult Problems, by Stephen Covey, Free Press, a division of Simon and Schuster, Inc. 2011