All tagged Solving our problems
Big problems are intractable.
They’re hard to get to grips with, hard to manage and hard to overcome.
No matter how much we believe in the cause, the scale of the mountain is daunting and, more often than not, can seem insurmountable. Which is why they’re ‘big’ problems.
We think of technology as the simple fix. If I simply bought this piece of software, I could get this work done so much more effectively. If only we implemented that new piece of tech, we’d get this billing process absolutely sorted.
Many times, though, when we actually get the funding, buy the tool and put the tech place, things don’t always go as planned.
One of my favorite quotes is “Own your outcomes”, and speaks to the need for us to take ownership for whatever happens to us.
It doesn’t mean we can control whatever happens to us, because many times we can’t. Things happen, whether we like it or not.
But what we can do is take ownership for our situations, stop complaining or commiserating, and control how we respond. In other words, run the problem and don't let the problem run you.
It’s a romantic notion, the idea of silver bullets.
It’s exciting (and oh so promising) to believe that there’s something out there - a solution, a framework, a technology, etc. - that has the potential of solving all of our problems or, at the very least, delivering a material, manifold improvement in our situation immediately.
I don’t think there is anything or anyone that operates at one polar extreme versus another. Sure, some folks veer more in one direction than another, but rarely, always and only at the extremes.
But you wouldn’t think so from most of the public rhetoric which, by definition, is driven by a desire for attention and alignment (with a predefined ideology - ours or someone else’s).
The past month or so has been a terrible one for Arsenal supporters like me.
We knew this would be a transition year and hence (we believed) we’d managed our expectations accordingly. But as the end of the season approached, we found ourselves in pole position to do something fantastic (for where the team was, anyway). We had a real shot at finishing 3rd in the league, thereby securing a coveted spot in the Champions League (very necessary to attract the best players), and we had the chance to bring home a European trophy, having reached the Europa League Final.
