Don McMinn

All leaders can become good problem-solvers. To do so, they must do four things: Anticipate problems before they occur; maintain a positive attitude while they occur; use all their resources to solve them as quickly as possible so they cease to occur; learn from them so the same problems do not occur again. —John Maxwell, Developing the Leaders Around You

The biblical story of David and Goliath pits a giant against a young man in an epic confrontation between good and evil. My favorite part of the story is when the duel begins: “Then it happened when the Philistine rose and came and drew near to meet David, that David ran quickly toward the battle line to meet the Philistine.”

David ran at Goliath.

It wasn’t a display of youthful hubris or stupidity; it was considered aggression and confident courage. David’s pugnacity must have thrown Goliath off balance. The giant was used to frightened, tepid foes, but here was a young man running towards him.

In your personal and professional affairs, run at your problems.

The alternate approach is procrastination or avoidance. Most problems do not resolve themselves; they must be aggressively and tenaciously pursued.

Identify at least two problems in your business or personal life that need to be addressed. Schedule a time to deal with each one.

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What gets measured gets managed. Drucker

A car’s dashboard offers a quick assessment of key systems: engine temperature, speedometer, odometer, fuel level, amps generated—important information that is constantly monitored and clearly stated.

Every organization should have a “dashboard”—a system that identifies and consistently measures key indicators of health and growth.

What does your organization’s dashboard include?

For-profit organizations are better at tracking key indicators than non-profit organizations. Non-profits often rationalize their lack of monitoring by thinking, “The mission of our organization is too ethereal to track; we deal with intangibles that can’t be expressed using numbers.” That’s a lame excuse. Every organization can identify key metrics that are quantifiable.

Metrics not only benefit  organizations; they are also advantageous for individuals. Track your finances using a budget (Quicken software is an easy system to use). Track how often you exercise. Weigh yourself every day and try to stay within five pounds (+ or -) of your ideal weight. Keep a record of how many books you read. Track how many social encounters you have each week.

It’s difficult to manage something unless you measure it.

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The important thing is not to stop questioning… Never lose a holy curiosity.  Albert Einstein

I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.   Kipling

Curiosity is simply a strong desire to know or learn something. It is a wonderful trait. It is the antidote for a passive mind; it takes you to new places; it adds zest to life; it is the key to learning. I can’t think of any downsides.

Brian Grazer is the poster child for curiosity.

In his must-read book, A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life, Grazer delves into the value of being curious. He dedicates the book, “For my Grandma Sonia Schwartz. Starting when I was a boy, she treated every question I asked as valuable. She taught me to think of myself as curious, a gift that has served me every day of my life.” What a great grandmother.

Early in life Grazer (who is a Hollywood movie producer) channeled his curiosity toward what he calls “curiosity conversations.” He contacts interesting people, requests a meeting, and if it happens, spends the time asking them questions. He’s had conversations with Muhammad Ali, Jeff Bezos, Jay Z, Steve Jobs, Condoleezza Rice, Ted Turner, Andy Warhol, Oprah Winfrey, and hundreds of other well-known people. What a wonderful expression of a curious mind.

The sixty-four-dollar question is: are you curious? Here’s a short self-assessment.

• Name three things that you are currently curious about and actively pursuing.
• What have you changed your mind about, lately?
• What have you learned, lately?

“CQ stands for curiosity quotient and concerns having a hungry mind. People with a higher CQ are more inquisitive and open to new experiences. They find novelty exciting and are quickly bored with routine. They tend to generate many original ideas and are counter-conformist.” Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic

Samuel Johnson said, “Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.”

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Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them, but they start talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you?—D. Martin Lloyd Jones

The voice you hear the most is your own. Question that voice because often you cannot trust it. My unfiltered, unchallenged voice is often random, paranoid, pessimistic and feeds on assumptions. Self-talk can get us into trouble.

Let’s make this practical. Right now, before you click to the next email, identify two or three thoughts that you’ve had in the last 24 hours that came out of nowhere, from an unidentified source, that you have, nevertheless, entertained and perhaps become anxious about.

Take control of your inner conversations.

We can’t control all of our thoughts (for instance, we have no control over our dreams: we don’t pick the topics and we can’t choose to stop) but we can control our conscious self-talk. Even though we often don’t initiate self-talk (as Jones asked in the opening quote, where do those first waking thoughts come from?) we do have control over whether or not we continue to coddle those thoughts. An old Chinese proverb teaches: “That the birds of worry and care fly above your head, this you cannot change; but that they build nests in your hair, this you can prevent.”

Constantly analyze your thoughts: identify who’s talking and reject suspicious thoughts from dubious sources. Simply change the conversation and start thinking of something else.

For more thought on this topic, see my posts Control your thoughts and Be careful of making assumptions

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Here are answers to last week’s puzzles:

SEQUENC_ – complete this word—sequence—using any letter other than E – Insert the letter F; when put on top of _ it creates the E vowel.

Using six pencils, create four equilateral triangles. Place three pencils on a flat surface in the shape of a triangle; then position the other three pencils on top of the triangle, vertically, to create three other triangles.