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Some problems are just a bear to work out. I don’t know about you, but it seems like I can get stuck on them forever. So I avoid, procrastinate, and complain.
Which, of course, is no help at all.
So I’ve developed some approaches which seem to help, at least most of the time.
Read the rest of this entry »We live in a very anxious time.
Some of the stress is justified, I guess, but when I look at what’s happened for the last decade, or two, or three … a lot of what I felt at the time didn’t really make anything better.
So I try to maintain a little perspective.
Read the rest of this entry »I get it. People are a pain. Employees. Customers. Random people in the store.
Not you, of course. You’re perfect. But everybody else is so annoying sometimes!
So how do we deal with this reality? Well, first, it’s about recognizing that this is the human condition. We’re all flawed and make mistakes.
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WE WOULD LIKE TO THINK that following the guidebook will make choices nice and neat and clean. So you might be discouraged at how, well, it’s a bit of a mess.
I just wanted to say this: you’re OK.
If it was nice and clean and orderly, everybody else could do it. The fact that choices ARE hard to make means that you have to put some work into creating order out of chaos.
And the universe is always going towards chaos.
WE’RE ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT at finding problems. Humans are hard-wired for it.
And people get rewarded for solving problems. So we get really good at it.
The problem is that this tendency means we’re not paying attention to what’s going right, what’s working. And your employees who aren’t creating problems tend to get ignored as well.
DISAGREEMENT IS NATURAL, because we’re human.
I’ve recently had to work on this, both for myself and for clients, and have some thoughts about building a graceful reconciliation.
It’s important to realize that you’ve entered a zone fraught with emotion, so treating this with logical arguments isn’t likely to end up with a great result.
EVERYTHING IS A DISASTER. 
Or at least it seems that way.
But you get a different perspective when you’re able to reflect after the fact. It’s human nature.
We’re expert at focusing on the detail. If we didn’t do that, the magnitude of everyday experience would overwhelm us! But it also means that we shut out 99% of the world to focus on the 1%.
Especially when it comes to problems.
YOUR BUSINESS screwed up. Publicly.
You had that blowup with the big customer, and they’re threatening a lawsuit. The press is snooping around and is going to eviscerate you on the front page of the business section.
Things are getting ugly and the pressure is on.
Like it or not, this is bound to happen to you a few times during your lifetime. Read the rest of this entry »
The Values-Based Business 