Episode Transcript

What’s up everybody? Welcome back to THE a.m.

So today, I actually want to talk about problems. I want to talk about problems, and I want to talk about really, how to see problems correctly. And it’s interesting, because just driving down the other day, I was driving with my wife, we were having a discussion about something, and we are just talking about solutions, and then she brought up something else. I was like, Hey, these are two different problems. They’re two different types of problems, and one ‘s more important than the other.

And when we are talking, one of the things that came out was this, we tend to generalize similar things, and we generalize them in an adverse way. So for instance, when you start a company, or when you’re in business, or you’re running a business, or whatever it is, you’ve got a lot of stuff going on, right? And if you ever are founding something, right, you founded something, you’re wearing tons of different hats, okay? And everything you do is important.

However, how do you find what is most important? Because everything ‘s high priority. So how do you actually prioritize? And that’s an adverse generalization, because all that I do is important, so everything ‘s high priority. And so it doesn’t matter what I do. Okay, cool. That will get you in trouble, because now all of a sudden, everything is like, you know, defcon five must get done yesterday, and then now you’re just caught in this churn with no way out, because you’re not properly looking at everything.

And so anyways, as you progress in business and life, we still take that generalization, if it’s not addressed, we still take that and do that. And this is what I mean by that, even if you’re later down the road, right, you got a team you’re running, you’re not wearing every hat anymore. That generalization, to not see the pieces or the problems efficiently, really will curb your ability to lead the team. And you have to be able to see problems at different levels, right? You have to be able to see problems as A problems, B problems, C problems, all this, right? Where you’ve classified different problems for what they do, how important they are, how urgent they are, and then how big of an impact are they going to have on the company and then what will the effect that have on the marketplace after you solve it?

And you have to be able to identify that and think through that, the more that you grow with the company, and the higher up you go, the more that strategy and vision becomes so important. Strategy and vision when you start out. They’re important. Don’t get me wrong. However, there’s so much to do that your primary goal at that point is, how do I get out of the machine, and how do I get out of the business to be on the business? And then how do you go from being on the business to where you’re helping work on things and all this other stuff, to being above the business, because there’s a whole nother level there outside of this. But the point of what I’m trying to get at is is this, you’ve got to directly identify problems and classify them the right way.

And there’s levels to problems. Problems don’t just come in one package, right? There’s levels to problems. And where do you see the most impact and the most forward movement within a company is when you solve an A problem, like an A level problem, right? An A plus problem, cool, it’s up there. However, everything else, all the other things, and I talked about this last episode, all the other things work surrounding that are really a distraction to not solve that problem, but if you solve this problem, what kind of chain reaction would it have in the company?

Andrew and I were talking today, and one of our scrums was, you know, what are our five current focuses for the year? What are the five things that we’re trying to solve that would be world changing for the company? What are the five things that we’re currently dealing with right now, that would radically change everything. And we we have those discussions, and we’re like, cool, where are we at with those five things, right? Where are we at with making these changes? Where are we at with implementing them, and what impact are we looking to have in them and get out of them?

And those changes can really radically be anywhere around the company, whether it’s, you know, personnel, whether it’s team, based whether it’s offering, based, whether it’s operations, production, whatever it is, however, if you notice the pattern, it’s a small focus of things to really try and solve the problems that matter most. It’s so interesting, we will run away. What from what matters most and doing? What from what matters most to do the work that is not as important, and I don’t know why, but is something that we all do

It’s interesting, because it’s important to stop doing that. To really find the real work, you’ve got to find your real work and the best work. To do is going to be the work that has the biggest impact on your life and on your company.

Anyways, guys, catch you later. Peace.