To make things better, you have to become a great problem solver. Your influence grows as you provide solutions to problems. All business transactions are the result of someone paying to get a problem solved, whether meaningful or minuscule. The more you are able to provide solutions for people’s problems, the more valuable you become to them. This ability requires that you bring unique ideas to the table. You can’t just be a thermometer; you have to become a thermostat.
Thermometers read the temperature, but thermostats are able to change the temperature. Don’t just bring problems to the table…offer solutions for them. No one wants to pay to find out they have a problem, but they will pay exceptionally well to get a problem fixed. Make it your practice never to bring a problem without a solution for it. Presenting a problem without a solution is really just a complaint in camouflage.
If you are struggling to find a solution, keep searching until you find one. Businessman J.P. Morgan said, “No problem can be solved until it is reduced to some simple form. The changing of a vague difficulty into a specific, concrete form is a very essential element in thinking.” Don’t give up on finding solutions; you may be moments away from a big breakthrough. Albert Einstein used to say, “It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” It was his tenacity that enabled him to outlast his problems.
Solutions don’t present themselves, they are sought after, hiding under conversations and thinking. The more options for solutions you can bring to problems, the more influential you become. People seek out those who can see fixes to problems.
If you surround yourself with small thinkers you will always find yourself surrounded with unsolvable problems. But when you surround yourself with big thinkers unsolvable problems become solvable. The problem didn’t change, but your ability to think through them did.
If you want to break through challenges you have to have an inner circle that can help you. Lyndon B. Johnson said, “There are no problems we cannot solve together, and very few that we can solve by ourselves.”
If you are facing a problem who do you go to? Who are the people that you surround yourself with that help you extract solutions?
Everyone should have someone that they can go to. If you don’t have someone you can go to…your mission is to find that someone and develop the relationship. We were built for community. Your creative success will be dependent upon the people you surround yourself with. If you don’t have a creative team to help you, you will limit your possibilities.
Collaboration breeds creativity.
* Taken from my book Leadership Starts With You: 20 Ways To Lead Yourself
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