Episode Transcript

Hey what’s up? What’s up? What’s up, everybody? Welcome back to THE a.m guys. Welcome back to five minute rants. I’m your host, Michael Abernathy. And welcome to the show predicated on the journey of life and business. Well, everybody, Today, I want to talk about problem solving. And this is especially important in business. But this really translates to everything in life. Because no matter where you are, no matter who you are, we as people have problems, and we consistently run into problems.

Now, first things first, I don’t think I view problems as negative, I really do not, because every time I’m making a lane change, or I’m entering a new area in life, and I’m growing, I’m going to come across and be confronted with a challenge or problem. And I personally see problems as an opportunity to grow and change. I don’t see problems as negative. Most people associate pain with negativity. But that’s not true, either. And pain can either be positive or negative, you can have pain from, you can have pain from short term thinking, and it is so negative in your life and destructive. And you can also have pain from delayed gratification, which is very positive from your life. And most people associate problems with pain. And because they think pain is negative, they think problems are negative. And that’s not true. And this also is reinforced in school to in the education system. Because if you get the wrong answer, and you don’t know how to figure out a problem, oh you’re in trouble, you didn’t get the right answer, you didn’t get a good grade. But that’s not how life works. Life is built to learn to figure things out to discover. And if educational system was built off of teaching people to learn, grow and solve problems, a whole lot of the world would really change would be different versus hey learn all these broad skill sets that are not really going to help you in life.

So anyways, going back to this, one of the number one problems in problem solving, ironically, I did not mean to make that pun, but it just happened. Or if that wasn’t a pun, whatever that was. But anyways, number one of the number one problems in problem solving is people judge a book by its cover. So when they look at a problem, they’re like, oh, wow, I am having a problem in school or with a relationship and all these things. And they look at the first thing that they think is causing the problem. And then they fix it, they put a bandaid on it, or they remove it. And as a result, now they have a chain reaction of unintended consequences that resulted from their quick decision or their quick fix. And most of us quickly fix because we like to take the path of least resistance, and we don’t stop and really look deeper at What is happening. Right? We don’t look deeper at What is happening. And so as a result, we don’t actually come to the root of the problem. And most problems in business in life aren’t always directly at face value. Okay.

So for instance, let me give you an example of this. When Andrew and I first started a business, we got hired by some customers, and it was great. They were excited, we were excited. And then like five months down the road, six months down the road, they hate our guts. And it’s like, oh, my gosh, What happened? Well, we must have sent this email. And we looked at it like no, we told them, there’s a scope change, and that we had to charge more money, and now they’re pissed. And so we looked at the problem like, well, they’re pissed because we have to charge more money. Now, that wasn’t actually the problem. That stems from us not shipping prior customer expectations five months earlier, saying, Hey, Here’s our definite scope. And if we get outside of this, we’re probably going to have to charge you more money. But when we get there, we’ll have a conversation. We didn’t ship any of that upfront. And so we thought it was overcharging the more money. And that’s why they’re pissed because they don’t want to pay us and they’re just jerks. And it’s like, no, we caused a problem that didn’t surface and emerge until five months later. And that is actually how most of life works. Right.

For instance, you have a car and the engine starts falling apart. Well, most likely, the reason why the engine started falling apart is because it was driven rough. For years, the oil was never changed on time, the fluids were never flushed or washed out, versus a car that you routinely take care of every 3000 miles you change the oil, you flush all the fluids, you get it checked up, you make sure all the gauges and you make sure all the sensors are up to date, that car is going to last a long time because you took care of it. But that problem of the engine falling apart well that these people just make junk cars they don’t ever last. Maybe that’s not the case. Maybe it’s because the problem started when we bought the car years ago.

And I’m saying this because if you only judge a book by its cover, or if you only judge a problem by its cover, you’re never going to actually really, really be able to solve problems and then you’re never actually going to move into fire prevention mode. You’re always just firefighting. Which of my experience sucks. You may like it. Other people may like it. I hate firefighting. I think it’s stupid. I would much rather spend the time with my wife and my family, then firefighting all the time in business.

Anyways guys, I’m out of time. I’m over like normal. You’ll hear me say that all the time. I’m out of time. But I’ll catch y’all later. Peace.