Package complaints with solutions
Just take a glimpse of what friends post on WhatsApp groups or even the multitude of problems and anger they demonstrate through their statuses.
Look at people’s Facebook posts. Read front pages of newspapers. Listen to news bulletins on radio and even watch news bulletins on TV.
Assess many meetings that people host in their groups or offices. The mo§st common thing among all these is that complaints, if not identifying problems, dominate.
Pointing fingers at others for what we perceive to be wrong and hitting them hard to change towards our line of thinking seems the only best way forward.
In most situations, as Rene Carayol observed, badmouthing those in authority and the bosses becomes a favourite pastime. Pointing fingers becomes the most popular form of exercise. The growing number of problems proves nothing, but is offered as hard evidence that the changes are wrong, or that the changes are being managed poorly.
The changes are, therefore, not for you.
Identifying problems is not a crime but identify them with a sense of ownership, with an innate desire to provide top-notch solutions. Many times, we take it as that our role is to delegate the problems to others so that they find solutions for them.
We consider it as our holy service to point errors and expect others to paint them white for us.
To be of great value to the corporate entity you are working for, to the sport arena where you are demonstrating y o u r athleticism, to any space where your skills can best dazzle the world, take it that you package top-notch solutions with your complaints. Come up with constructive ideas of your own, instead of waiting for somebody else to fix things. Get busy doing what you can do instead of second-guessing somebody else’s efforts.
People that achieve greatness are those that find solutions in the myriad of problems. Mahatma Gandhi did not waste time complaining of the ill treatment of his compatriots in India; he liberated them. Mother Theresa of Calcuta did not blame governments for poor economic policies that left many destitute; she cared for them. When Abebe Bikila noted that there was no pair of shoes for him at the Olympics, he run barefoot and won. Thomas Edison did not blame God that he created day and night; he discovered the electric bulb so that the night resembles the day.
After the Second World War, Japan had a fuel crisis, vehicles were getting grounded.
Hoinichiro Honda did not blame the war. He noticed a little motor he had, one that was the size and type to drive a traditional lawnmower, and he got the idea of hooking it up to his bicycle. In that moment, the first motorized bike was created. Soon, many people asked him to make motorized bikes for them then he made many such that with increasing demand he run out of motors.
All innovations we see are as a result of identifying problems and packaging them with solutions. To be an elite performer you need to cherish challenges as on the other side they have the power to demonstrate y o u r uniqueness. It is human nature to cry when things seem not to go our way but that changes nothing. No amount of a torrent of tears and litany of complaints will bring bread on the table, will instigate change, will be the catalyst of progress. It is the ability to craft and chisel solutions that skirt around the problems identified that makes a difference.
It is imperative to note that we are the solutions that we seek. It is necessary to always ask ourselves—if not me then who else? If not now then when?
The inalienable truth is that there are more than enough problems to go around and there will always many so take a share of your responsibility for fixing things. The fact that people win peace awards demonstrates that the world is uneasy but there are people that try their level best to bring harmony. Think of the Nobel awards, they all just symbolise that what matters most in life is identifying problems and chiseling great means of dealing with them.
Lest you do not know, the only way you can make it great in life is by finding solutions to challenges that have been a thorn in the lives of others. Bring peace where there is war; put food on the table of the hunger-stricken, provide water for those drought-stricken, sale a product that will change lives of people.
When you have found a solution to a problem then you are heading for great destiny in the Guinness book of records. Human live for only one purpose and one purpose alone and that is to find solutions. You will notice that all that you work for whether at the office or home is simply a means of finding solutions. If anything, you are in the business of finding solutions.
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