Category Archives: Problem Solving

“Things should be going better for our department”

A beloved former client writes:

“It seems somebody thinks things should be going better for our department.”

So here’s my question….what’s the metric for “going better” and based on those metrics, are things actually “going better”?
Remember the three Great Tasks of work:
Think
Create
Communicate.

 

If things are going better (or at least holding their own), has that fact been appropriately communicated?

Just a thought this morning.

The Quarter Drawing

A long time ago, my friend Sandy Gohn described a way to prioritize problems and issues.  I’ve been describing it to others since then, and I begin by saying:  “draw a circle around a quarter.”  My friend Paul Lagasse posted the method this way on his blog:

The Quarter Drawing 

When you’re dealing with a bunch of seemingly intractable problems, the trick is to figure out where they belong:

The Quarter Drawing

Focus on the stuff in the lower right quadrant and forget about the rest.

The quarter drawing is so called not because of the way the drawing is divided, but because you can trace the circle with a handy coin when you’re trying to console your buddy in a bar”.

It’s a system that simply works to prioritze how to use your resources!