by carlos raposo
I'll never forget being in an airport on one of the hottest days of the summer. The room was sweltering. Down at the end of the room was a big industrial fan. Just sitting there turned off.
I got up, walked over, and turned the fan on.
As I moved back to my seat, everyone I passed thanked me.
Maybe the other 75 people in the room hadn't noticed the idle fan. Or they saw it, but figured only an airport employee could turn it on.
Perhaps it took special skill from a trained technician. Or it was airport equipment not to be used in that area.
It could be other people didn't connect a fan with cooling down the high temperature in the room. They saw the fan, but simply didn't realize it could help their situation.
Whatever the case, we all limit ourselves by not recognizing the solutions right in front of us.
Is your business earning less than you want?
Do you have trouble motivating employees to do their best work and get behind new ideas?
Are you having a hard time establishing the important contacts that will move your business and career forward?
Those are just a few possibilities. Think about your most pressing problems. Is there an obvious solution staring you in the face?
Understanding Your Inner Process
Solutions alone are not enough. One must unlock and activate an internal process to take action. I work with executives and groups to provide that activation to create internal engagement. You get the motivation, the conviction, and the added energy to move forward toward a satisfying and rewarding solution.
We often have blind spots that prevent us from clarity of vision. This is true of everyone. And very few people, without the help of an active blind spot detection system (coach, counselor, therapist, mentor, teacher, book, movie), can fully know the impact of these blocking mechanisms.
( j chen open and close sign board)
It's vital for leaders to recognize the factors that are holding them back. Then work to overcome them. This frees you to consider more worthwhile options, to truly believe you can use them, and make the best solutions succeed.
A software engineer who worked for Apple in the very early days when they only has a dozen employees had a few personal observations about Steve Jobs at his best. He worked shoulder to shoulder with Jobs.
"Steve always put his solutions into action with full commitment and complete belief in their efficacy. Few things could stop him."
You've Got the Solution. Now Take Action
Solutions are just ideas. Take action to own the solution, then apply it. Your solution becomes a concrete reality to improve your life, business, leadership and future.
As with anything, improvement is a process. Create doable steps to obtain the solution, then more steps to put it into action. I call the mastery of this process, Applied Intentional Excellence tm
The worst thing you can do is not try and not engage. Just like the people in the airport, you can sit in a steamy room sweating in your nice business clothes.
Or you can get up, walk over to the big industrial fan, and flip it on.
Then watch as everyone on your team thanks you. You may even be hailed as the next genius in your industry. All because you grabbed the obvious solution and put it into action.
Create Your Billion Dollar Revolution
Many business revolutions start because someone saw an obvious solution, then put it into action.
Paul Allen, one of the founders of Microsoft, saw the first home computer kit in a magazine in late 1974. He knew it would require a simple operating system. So he and young Bill Gates created the first. The rest is history.
Colonel Sanders of KFC fried chicken fame saw a big problem in the restaurant business. In those days pan friend chicken took hours to make. The cook had to arrive at 2am to start frying for lunch rush.
Sanders created a special pressure fryer that dramatically decreased cooking time. That, combined with his "secret recipe", tripled restaurant sales.
None of this was a big secret to restaurant owners of the day. It's just that Sanders, who was a 62 year-old former gas station owner, was the first to use the solution. Then he worked feverishly to spread it throughout the industry.
What is your solution? Take action to create a process and use the obvious answer. It's a very simple concept that could be the revolution you need.
Carlos Raposo helps business owners, leaders, managers, and others put good solutions into action.
Learn more and contact him for your no-obligation discussion at www.CarlosRaposoCoaching.com.
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