Breaking A Bad Decision

I was working with a board faced with a major problem...with no workable solution. These are good people, who understand their business, have been at it for a long time.

They completely understood their situation, and for the last six months no optimal, hell, no viable solution was available.

This particular problem had colored all other actions, made what had formerly been a fun operation a death march.

As their consultant, I wanted to bring some light. I’m supposed to be the magic man.

We’d been through worse before. But the business has changed. Their reason for being is now called into question.

I had an opportunity to sit down with the owner. He’s a long time friend and supporter.

We agreed we weren’t making progress and we weren’t liking the results.

I suggested that since the old tools weren’t working, why not set up an internal blog, just for the board, get a promise to have each board member post their thoughts twice a week for two months.

Nobody on the outside would see our work, but maybe we would get to a different place. I would go first.

Writing a blog post requires a couple of things. One is writing, two is finding something to write. That requires getting out of your rut, finding something new.

The happy news is that a number of erroneous preconceptions got defined and fixed. Not by the readers, but by the writers.

And sure enough, it turned out that all the trust we had been building with our customers had created some requests for help. We’ve got some promising work to provide.

Will it work? Who knows? But we are getting the snap back, the confidence to create for an appreciative audience.

The original problem? It’s still there. But it’s a lot less important. If we keep doing something else, it may well go away.

New problems require new solutions.

Tips 4 The Big Chair – Get a new perspective