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This article is adapted from my published book, “Five Questions”)

I love having simple, powerful, repeatable frameworks for thinking through complicated situations.  For example, Thomas Sowell recommend 3 questions for considering a political or economic decision:

• Compared to what?
• At what cost?
• Where is your hard evidence?

Simple questions help you get to the heart of issues.  The answers can help you avoid painful or unexpected consequences.  They’re portable, sensible, and wise.  You can use them to teach others to think carefully and wisely about complicated situations.  They help you get “outside” typical perspectives and review options with less emotions.  The answers are automatically useful in persuading others or building a case for your recommendation. 

Let’s dive right into the five questions so you see how simple they are – and how rich the answers will be:

• What problem am I trying to solve?
• What am I optimizing for?
• What premium am I willing to pay for ________?
• How does this help my organization?
• How does this help my customers?

I recommend you work through the questions in this order to get the best results.  Too many leaders become convinced about the “right” answer for their organization before they’ve considered what problem they’re trying to solve, or what they’re optimizing for.  Far too many people go into buying decisions and contract negotiations without understanding affordability.  Business magazines are replete with stories about leaders who ruined their organization or their relationship with customers. 

All five questions matter. Work through these five questions, in this order, and reap the rewards.

Let’s examine each question in more detail.

What problem am I trying to solve?

Albert Einstein supposedly said (though there is some dispute about it) “If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.”

We far too often spend sixty minutes finding solutions to problems that don’t matter. 

Assuming you have a significant problem which does matter, your first step is to do everything necessary to make your problem statement crystal-clear. 

Go through the Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How dimensions.  Quantify the problem statement as much as you can.  Add time elements.  Add financial elements. 

When choosing between multiple options, it’s a mistake to think that you’re choosing between “Problem” and “No Problem.”  It’s about what problem(s) you prefer to have.  We must remember this fundamental fact: Every solution generates new problems and challenges.

We tend to fool ourselves because what looks like “No problem!” to us is probably creating problems for someone else!  Also, we tend to become frustrated upon discovering that our chosen solution generated problems we hadn’t anticipated.

Important: Define the problem in an emotionless fashion.  Emotion is critically important to who we are and how we make decisions.  But emotional factors don’t belong in the problem definition itself.  You can say “We’ll be happy and my boss will be overjoyed when the problem is solved,” but don’t make “My boss is unhappy” into a problem statement. What’s the root cause of her unhappiness?

Everything begins with first asking, “What problem am I trying to solve?”

Sidebar: Why You Should be Grateful for Problems

“Good grief, stop with the victim worldview!”

That’s what I wanted to say to my colleague who busted out a long litany of problems heaped on him.

I probably should have been that blunt, but I wasn’t. I did encourage him to consider the problems from a different perspective.

“No problem, no pay.” My dad taught me this. You get paid in this world for solving problems. Even people paid by the hour are compensated for what they can do during that time.

Problems create environments where we have to learn, improve, grow. The fact that problems exist which need to be solved becomes part of what drives our larger purpose.

We should value problems because they remind us that this is not utopia (which means “no where”).

Problems create opportunities for relationships. Problems we can’t solve on our own draw us into fellowship with one another and greater recognition of our true dependence on God.

Problems showcase how much we should be grateful.

Wallowing in our problems never helps us. “Oh poor, pitiful me.” Excuses. Flee into distraction. Change the subject. Self-medicate your “pain” with food, alcohol, bad TV. Choose to “kick the can down the road” and deal with it another day. (Hard truth — That “can” is more like a grizzly bear cub; it grows up and gets nastier.) I’ve never seen a problem solved by whining about it.

Our true challenge is not that we have problems to solve, but we become overwhelmed trying to solve them all simultaneously. The key behavior is to focus your energy on solving one problem at a time. Pick one. Then follow-through with some persistence to make genuine progress towards solving it.

What am I optimizing for?

[Alternatively, “For what am I optimizing?” for the grammarians in the audience.]

Fact: You can’t optimize for everything simultaneously.  There will be no significant progress until you decide what to optimize for and accept some compromises elsewhere.

For example, you might optimize for minimum cost.  You will then accept lower quality, delays, inconveniences, lack of variation, temporary break-fix problems, etc. 

You might optimize for process efficiency and repeatability.  You won’t please those who want exceptions and variation for their convenience.  You won’t retain some team members who aren’t sold on the process-first mindset. 

You might optimize for time — speed of execution, or delivery by a certain deadline.  You’ll accept reduced scope, or the costs of more resources. 

You might optimize for customer or client experience.  You will accept inefficiencies in your processes, possibly higher costs and return rates, higher wages for better customer service people, less standardization, inconveniences for your team, etc. 

You might be thinking, “But I need to deliver a good customer experience, sharpen my processes, and reduce my operating costs!” These can be interrelated.  It is possible to optimize for one primary objective, and then moderate that with a secondary effort to partially optimize another deliverable.   For example, you can optimize for customer experience, and then work to optimize certain process flows which support a good customer experience, or reduce costs to deliver the same customer experience.   But you must first select one objective to be primary and accept compromises elsewhere.

Here is another way to think about what to optimize: Which stakeholder do you want to please the most?  Which stakeholder would you prefer to have disappointed, or even angry with the results?

It’s much easier to lead when you’re clear on your optimization framework.  Once it’s clear to you, then relentless communicate in words and actions to all the stakeholders.  You’ll find it makes it eases the burden of decision-making, as well.  Decide in favor of those things which contribute to optimization in your chosen direction.

Optimization isn’t confined to the workplace.  It applies to relationships, fitness, hobbies, etc.  We don’t aim for procedurally-efficient conversations with our loved ones.  The act of walking our beloved dog is optimized for his need to “express” himself and happily inhale half the state of Iowa.  Any exercise we get is a bonus.  Certain holiday meals take about the same amount of time to eat as a regular dinner but we gladly put in the special effort to prepare traditional favorites. 

Try it out: “What am I optimizing for?”

What premium am I willing to pay for ________?

Nothing is free – there are always tradeoffs in time, quality, and cost.   There are many kinds of costs – direct, indirect, obvious, hidden, immediate, and longer-term. There are multiple ways to get things done.  You can do something yourself, delegate, or buy a service, and within those you can choose different levels of quality and timing.

People tend to become myopic when they think only about direct financial costs.  This is why I prefer to use the term “premium,” because the increase in one option may have nothing to do with figures recorded in the balance sheet.

Consciously evaluate options by asking “What premium am I willing to pay for _____________?”   How much am I willing to pay extra – in time, effort, or funds – in order to get X result? 

If I could free up more time by paying someone else to work on a project, I could use my limited time on more valuable things.  If I could live with the premium of slightly lower quality I could use my limited funds in different ways.  I might enjoy a more desirable outcome later if I can delay my gratification longer. If I would be willing to pay more I would get a higher-quality product that I could never make myself, or a superior quality input to my business process to deliver something better for my customer. 

To make this analysis work it helps to have this information available:

• What you value as an outcome
• Cost of your time
• Costs of inputs and processing
• Alternative costs
• Costs of risks associated with different quality, longer time, different scope

Try it out: “What premium am I willing to pay for____?”

How does this help my organization?

Ideally you can focus your team on the highest-value, most satisfying work, and deliver superior results for your customers, employees, and business owners. Whatever options you’re exploring, whatever choices you make impacts your organization. 

Be sure to consider:

• The perspectives of employees/members
• Short-term and long-term ability to attract and retain talent – your organization is primarily limited by time and human ingenuity, so having the right people is critical
• Teamwork and the identity people associate with your organization
• Process dynamics: speed, output, quality, waste
• COGS questions – including input sources & costs, inventory turns, delivery costs, etc.
• Cash flow
• Debt and ability to service debt
• Contractual duration – upside and downside risks
• Focus on essentials for organization success, rather than distractions. 
• Brand and image

Try it out: “How does this help my organization?”

How does this help my customers?

No customer, no business.  No person to serve, no need for your non-profit. 

Eventually, individually and collectively, the choices we make affect our ability to help our customers.  They shape our products and services.  They affect our pricing.  They influence our ability to delight our customers.  They affect our ability to gain new customers, referral business, and repeat business. 

Reminder: Don’t be fooled by a time gap between decision and consequence for your customer.  Don’t be lulled into a false sense of security because there was no immediate effect for your customer. 

Try it out: “How does this help my customers?”

Wrapping Up and Going Forward

The five questions are tools that become better with use and experience.  Easy to remember, profitable to work through:

• What problem am I trying to solve?
• What am I optimizing for?
• What premium am I willing to pay for ________?
• How does this help my organization?
• How does this help my customers?

Share them with others and let’s help the people in our spheres of influence make better decisions.

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Glenn Brooke is the author of the soon-coming book, “Bold and Gentle: Living Wisely in an Age of Exponential Change.”  This article is adapted from one of the chapters.

Learn more at https://encouragingpress.com

“Should I Stay or Should I Go?” was a hit song by the Clash in 1981, and it’s a common question today.  You’re not the only one calculating your stay vs. leave equation.  There is no formula.  It’s not as a simple as a pro/con exercise because there are heart issues and probabilities.  If art is science with more than seven variables, this question qualifies as art!

I will give you a set of questions that can help you decide – and hard-won advice.  Think of this exercise as scenario planning coupled with an honest self-dialog about who you are and what you need.

Questions to Explore for Yourself

Am I more running away from the current job, or running towards a new opportunity?  Knowing where you fall on that spectrum, and why, is helpful. 

Am I mostly bored?  If that’s a big part of why you don’t like your current situation, then is a new/different job the only option?

Am I fleeing a toxic work environment?  It’s easy to justify a change from a soul-sucking miserable situation that daily fills you with dread. It’s important to ask yourself how much of that toxicity is on yourself and your behaviors.  We bring ourselves into new roles, with all our strengths and weaknesses.  Keep in mind that some stressors are going to be in another role, too. 

An old Quaker man lived at the edge of his village.  He would greet newcomers as they arrived.  When asked “How are the people here in your village?” he would ask in turn, “How were the people in the village you’re coming from?”  If they said, “Oh, they were wonderful, and we were sorry to leave!” he would reply, “You will find it the same here.”  And if they said, “Oh, they were horrible to us and we were thrilled to leave!” he would reply, “Sadly, it will be much the same here.”

Am I evaluating my full range of choices? This is a starting view on the range, you might have others:

• Re-energize, re-skill in my current role
• Take a different role in my same organization
• Take a similar role in a different organization
• Take an entirely different role in a different organization
• Go independent, or start a new business
• Retire and focus on other priorities

What is the realistic growth potential of the other job? Does it position you for a new growth curve?  Expanded or different network of people and capabilities?  Does a different location create new experiences?  Is this potential growth enough to compensate for the challenge of transitioning?

Will this (current or new) job force a relocation or difficult move that is unacceptable to my family?  Family needs are real, and professionals are responsible people.

Am I able to be successful in my current job as I expect it to go forward?  Why or why not? Has something changed that will clearly make it more difficult to be successful in the future?  Sometimes you may choose to move on before a role changes, to avoid a scenario where you won’t be successful.

It is just one person I don’t want to work with, just part of my current role, or the whole job?  There are ways to mitigate the negative impact of a single person.  Nearly all jobs have requirements we don’t especially like. 

Am I still learning?  Limited learning potential is a good reason to consider a change. Most people believe that learning new things is crucial for happiness. Professionals are always concerned about continuing development.  There are seasons of life when a big learning curve is too difficult because of what else is going on in your life.  I know several instances where a person was adamant about leaving out of frustration, and we counseled staying in a role because they had more to learn.  In every case the “universe” made sure they were immediately faced with the same learning challenge in their new role.

Am I ready for a much larger role, with more/broader responsibilities?  Honesty counts here.  If you’re unsure, get insights from a trusted mentor.  Stretch roles are good for you.  Overconfidence is a precursor to a humbling.

Am I overly concerned with what something thinks of me, or what I should do?  This covers a lot of territory but ponder it.  Don’t over-weight one person’s opinion in your equation.

Is there a halo effect making this new job look better? Growing up in West Virginia we used to say, “The grass is greener over the septic tank.” Your starting boss may not be your boss for long.  Your initial assignment could morph into another priority.  The “brochure” view you saw when you interviewed may not be reality.

How much of my success is related to my institutional knowledge and network of relationships in my current role, and how much do I “take with me” into a new opportunity? Be sober about the challenges of starting anew – you won’t have a deep personal network inside that organization, and need to learn all the new procedures, expectations, and acronyms.  Many people overestimate their ability to get things done in a different situation.

Finally, What’s the delta on the money and benefits?  These are real issues, but I put this question last because many people make poor decisions by fixating on the money issues.  Who you are is more important to your happiness than what you have. Make a realistic assessment of the stability and assets your family needs.  There are raises or salary reductions, and compensating factors like lower or higher expenses.  Benefits are particularly important for your dependents. 

Hard-won Advice

Only discuss options with people who love you and want what’s best for you.  Don’t talk with your current boss about anything that sounds like leaving until you have a plan.  Seek wisdom from mentors.  Pray and meditate – you need a deep sense of affirmation on your chosen direction.

It’s easier to get a job when you have a job.  The best advice is to apply/interview/accept a new job before you resign from your current position.  A good exception case is if you’re asked to do something unethical.

You don’t have to accept an offer.  Often you won’t know the full money/benefits picture until the offer comes, and sometimes that is the deal-breaker. 

You probably feel a high level of responsibility to people, programs, and unfinished projects.  Think about what milestones would help you feel better about closure.  On people issues, distinguish between “responsible for” and “responsible to.”  Above all, remember that you do not owe your soul to this organization.

Take steps to be better prepared for a new role in the future:

• Build up an emergency fund so that you and your family can weather a transition time without pay (and if you’re moving, often increased expenses).
• Continue to work on your professional development
• Monitor for new opportunities
• Create a relationship with a job recruiter
• Strengthen your personal and professional network
• Watch your organizations for signs of impending downturns and strategic shifts which could affect your position

The decision to leave a job and take a different opportunity is rarely fatal. Neither is choosing to stay longer in a role.  It’s less about making the “wrong” decision and more about understanding the options and potential of one scenario vs. another. 

Recommended resources

Manager Tools has published multiple podcasts which can help you in job transitions.  Go to manager-tools.com and search for podcasts on

• How to resign
• The last 90 days
• The first 90 days

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Glenn Brooke is the author of the soon-coming book, “Bold and Gentle: Living Wisely in an Age of Exponential Change.”  This article is adapted from one of the chapters. Learn more at https://encouragingpress.com

You can’t rest on what you know, or your past experiences.  The world is moving, so you need to continue to sharpen your existing skills.  The world is evolving, so you need to master new skills. In our VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) world the most important skill is the ability to master new capabilities.

I call this professional development, rather than the commonly used phrase “career development.”  Professionalism is entirely within your control.  You can take full responsibility and be happy to accept help when it is available.  Professionals don’t expect their boss or their organization to “develop” them.  Career prediction is impossible and impractical – there are too many variables you simply do not control. 

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Sidenote: The English word “career” comes from 14^th century French, carere, which was a circular racetrack.  We get the word “careen” from the same root.  By contrast, the English word “vocation” comes from the Latin word vocare, which means “calling” or “voice.” In general, you should pursue a calling, rather than racing at top speed in circles.  

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There are three critical outcomes of professional development:

1. Increased effectiveness in your current role or job. Status quo skills mean you’re falling behind.
2. Being prepared for opportunities as they emerge.  Many of the most interesting roles and jobs for you don’t exist yet or aren’t available now.  You want to be prepared when the time comes.
3. Joy in the journey!  A common theme among people who are “burned out” in a role is that they aren’t learning anything new.

Professional development doesn’t happen automatically, or by osmosis.  It takes commitment, energy, work, and a disciplined approach. Reading this may inspire you, but you’ll need to provide those yourself. You need an investor mindset looking for delayed profits over months and years.  I have a friend who says that anyone can complete a marathon, because all they must do is not stop.  All professional development is outside your comfort zone; autopilot work inside your comfort zone requires zero learning. Professional development requires embracing the difficult.

Too few people receive good instruction in how to manage their professional development.  This the guidance I want you to absorb here.  I’m sharing what I’ve learned from my mentors and from personal experiences.

The domains of professional development

There are three spheres of information and knowledge to consider:

• Executing your current work responsibilities and being prepared for expanding your current role.
• Industry and competitors, and adjacent industries.
• New-to-you individual skill and knowledge areas.

The general development domains for every professional include:

• Communication – structuring and framing, persuasion, story-sharing and presentation, writing
• Self and People leadership – seeking out mentors, getting feedback, fundamental management practices
• Program and project management
• Analysis – data exploration, quantitative methods, data presentation, asking superior questions

Build your specific craft – your combination of learned skills and art to produce something beautiful and useful – on top of these general skill domains.  Stabilize your craft on long-lasting skills. Keep pace with technical advances where the half-life of each skill is shrinking.

Professionals strengthen relationships with people.  Create plans to connect with industry contacts and your personal network.  Set reminders to stay in touch.  Share generously with people in your network to feed relationships.

Learn about topics which interest you, even if they have nothing to do with your current employment.  These give you satisfaction, energy, and ideas which help you stand out from others.  Many people well along in their professions cite hobbies and interests which led to significant new relationships and cross-fertilization of ideas.

Special Projects, Sabbaticals, Internships, and Volunteer Organizations

Immersing yourself partly or wholly into a different work situation is a powerful avenue to development. 

The most common opportunities are special projects.  You volunteer (or are “voluntold”) or asked to help on project separate from your regular work.  Pursue these opportunities!  Say Yes as often as reasonable. It’s an opportunity to use your existing skills in a new setting, improve your network, learn from others, and stretch your experience further.  Early in my career I was given powerful advice: “Figure out how to do your regular job in 30 hours a week, then use 10-15 hours a week on other projects and learning new things.”  It takes discipline to shrink your regular work, but the payoffs are enormous. 

Some roles, especially in academia, allow you a sabbatical – a time every so many years to go off and work elsewhere for a period of months.  Exploit opportunities to fully immerse yourself in a different environment, working with different people, on something that fascinates you. 

Internships are usually a formalized opportunity to work as a “newbie” alongside experienced people.  This is a great format for when you want to try out a different kind of work.  It’s forced practice with feedback built in.   My observation is that internships can be hard to engineer yourself; you usually have to wait for an organization to open up internship opportunities.

Nearly all professionals can serve in a volunteer organization.  Charitable and religious organizations, local associations, industry associations, and small business boards of directors are always looking for help.  These are powerful opportunities to use your skills, sharpen your own capabilities, and help others in the process.  You can demonstrate leadership and skills outside of your regular work, which give you credibility to move into other roles at your organization. 

How much time should you invest in professional development?

Most professionals are putting in 50 hours a week in their job.  Not every hour is effective, of course, but let’s work with that number.  10% of 50 hours/week is 20 hours/month.  You can get an enormous amount of learning and practice into 20 hours if you’re disciplined.  This is the 10% that makes the 90% much better!  I recommend you aim for 20 hours/month.  Some months might be less, but if you aim for 10 hours you’re more likely to get only 6 to 8. 

If that time investment seems impossible, start with 2 hours a week.  A solid 2 hours a week is about 100 hours a year, more than enough for significant progress. 

How to create a learning plan for new information

A learning plan is focused on learning new information – practice and feedback are important, too, but a learning plan is primarily about expanding your base of information. Your brain has enormous capability; some neurobiologists have estimated that a typical person could learn 7 facts every second for 200 years!

Professionals take charge of their own learning plans.  They don’t wait around for someone else to define it for them. Professionals solicit help from others to accomplish their learning plans.

Use this four-step process:

1. Decide what you need and want to learn. (Imagine how knowing X will help you in the future.)
2. Identify sources of information.
3. Schedule time to consume the information, study, and learn.
4. Assess the results and update your plan for the next season of learning.

Easy-peasy! Naturally, I have some detailed recommendations to add.

There are three spheres of information and knowledge to consider as you decide what you need and want to learn:

• Executing your current work responsibilities and being prepared for expanding your current role.
• Industry and competitors, and adjacent industries.
• New-to-you individual skill and knowledge areas.

Apply the 80/20 rule – focus 80% in your strength areas, 20% in new areas. For the 80% of your effort, ask these two questions: What’s most relevant to your primary occupation and interests? What are strengths you can build upon by expanding your information base? Continuous learning in these areas gives you depth.

Focus 20% of your learning plan in areas that are completely different. This is your best strategy for developing breadth. What could you learn about architecture, cooking, motorcycles, film editing, ice sculpture, astrophysics, carpet manufacturing, 3D printing, etc. – areas which are completely new to you? Most professionals do not give much thought to new areas, and yet this information will seed tremendous growth in the future. Cross-disciplinary awareness is a strong foundation for innovation.

You should also consider the long-term value proposition.  Knowing relevant industry trends and keeping up with contacts is useful.  Step back to consider the big trends in your industry, or adjacent industries.  Some time and effort need to go towards the unglamorous foundation material with long-term payoff.

The most common sources of information are:

• Webinars, teleconferences, podcasts, local group meetings
• Formal conferences and events
• Personal interviews with experts
• Books, magazines and blogs

Recognize your preferred modes of input and choose sources accordingly for efficiency – you almost certainly are either a reader or auditory learner. I read text much faster than I can listen, for example, but I try to use audio and video materials to round out my reading.

In addition to the default approach that most of us have – a Google search! — don’t overlook your local librarian. They are experts at helping you find information and identify what’s most relevant to you. Also, Amazon reviews are good for helping you figure out if something is at the right level for your needs.

Additional comments on information sources:

• Don’t neglect Pre-Gutenberg books and writing.  Only the very best information was copied and preserved when it was so expensive to do so.
• Biographies are an excellent source of insight about how to manage difficult situations and people.
• Video is abundant now.  TED talks are generally excellent for introductions and insights.  Many universities and colleges are posting lectures from entire course online.
• Podcasts are especially useful if you’re looking for interviews with experts in narrow fields.
• Industry associations generally publish webinars, newsletters, and magazines.  These are a great starting point to explore industries other than your own.

Schedule time to consume the information and learn! Nine times out of ten, what gets scheduled gets done. Professionals block out time on the calendar for the important, but not urgent work, including learning.

You may have trouble breaking down a lot of material into “chunks” that fit your schedule. I encourage you to think “seasonally” and “piecemeal.” For example, if you want to learn more about architecture, find a book or some magazines in the field, and leaf through 2 chapters and one magazine a week over 4-6 weeks.  Don’t overcomplicate the process.

For longer learning topics, create smaller milestones around focused areas. For example, shift your thinking from “get better at presentations” to “identify ideas to help me open presentations better.”  Frame your objectives as a means of performing at a higher level consistently.

Your learning plan is a living document. I set up a task reminder to update mine quarterly.  I find that 3 months is long enough for serious study but short enough I can’t procrastinate.

A word of encouragement: You can do this. Don’t make your learning plan too complicated. Pick one topic to learn about, find good materials, and schedule time to work through it.

Acquiring New Skills Quickly

Knowing stuff is useful, but there are also physical and mental skills which are critical to professional success.  Your learning plan supports the information side of development.  The physical and mental skills require additional work.

The critical first step is to set a goal with a meaningful purpose behind it.  Make it clear and concrete, so you can define what success looks like.  “Fluency in a XYZ language” is too vague; “Be able to carry on a 30 minute business conversation with a native Portuguese speaker because I want to increase our business engagement in Brazil” is better.

Step two: Break down the skill into chunks.  Deconstruct skills like you would break down a large project into smaller parts.

Step three: Identify the 20% of the components give 80% of the outcome value.  For example, you can significantly improve your formal sales presentations overall by focusing on the start (e.g., the first 3 sentences and your body language) and the ask.  

Step four: Focus your practice on one component of the skill at a time.  This maximizes the value from your time.  Study how professional sports players practice most of the time – hours on fundamental, individual elements of the whole game. 

Celebrate your progress and accomplishments.  Don’t allow any sense of “But I’m still bad at X” to steal your joy and satisfaction from your concrete progress.

Pro tip: List all the reasons you might quit before you reach your goal, or the excuses you’re most likely to give when you don’t finish.  It’s hard to master new skills and especially awkward at the beginning.  Commit to not giving in for any of these reasons for your first 6 practice times.

Finally, the skill of acquiring new skills quickly and efficiently is one of the most critical skills you can develop!  Even an old dog can learn new tricks if he knows how to learn them.

Applying what you learn

My grandfather told me “You can’t never learn nothin’ worthless.” Though true, passively absorbing information has limits.  Applying what you learn is key to learning that makes a difference.

Create an external reality to hold yourself accountable for results. I will often tell friends what I’m working on, and encourage them to ask me about what I’m learning. Another tactic is to plan to teach someone else about what you learn.  Or write an article or give a presentation to others.  Force yourself to use the information you’ve learned.

Take a few moments when you finish a learning block to assess how well it went. Were you satisfied with your effort? What should you do differently next time? Are there materials that you can pass along to others? I often find that I surfaced new things I want to learn about and make notes about those interests for future learning plans.

Dealing effectively with challenges

The best of plans can grind to a halt on the shoals of everyday life. Professionals find ways to keep moving forward.

Falling behind schedule?  Yesterday doesn’t matter.  Today is a new day.  Pick up and begin again.

Starting too late?  It’s never too late for learning and development.  The best time to plant an oak tree was 20 years ago, and the next best time is today.

Lost interest?  Re-energize by picking something that interest you, and pivot to that to regain momentum. 

Not being supported?  Excuses are lies we tell ourselves. Your professional development is on you.  Find people who will support you. 

Bit off more than you can chew?  We often overestimate what can be done in a short time, and wildly underestimate how much we can accomplish over a year or 3 years.  Steady work yields its fruit in time. 

Professionals approach development as a continuing journey of getting better.  That self-image helps pull you along, because we do what we believe we are.

Recommended Resources:

The First 20 Hours (Josh Kaufman) – core practices for rapid skill acquisition. 

How to Read a Book (Mortimer Adler) – classic advice from a Master learner.  I observe that most people extract very little from books because they view reading as a passive activity. 

Ultralearning (Scott Young) – a guide to the practices that can help you master languages and complex fields of knowledge in short times.  The section on how to break down a topic into learnable chunks is especially good.

The Art of Learning (Josh Waitzkin) – a child chess prodigy, Waitzkin went on to master several other disciplines and has thought deeply about reproducible means of mastering new skills.

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Glenn Brooke is the author of the soon-coming book, “Bold and Gentle: Living Wisely in an Age of Exponential Change.”  This article is adapted from one of the chapters. Learn more at https://encouragingpress.com

Gentlefolk, 2020 budget conversations have already begun.  As Ted Plush taught many of us, “Even when they say it’s not about the money…it’s about the money.”

Here are my tips about building and monitoring budgets, each learned through painful (and embarrassing) mistakes.

Building budgets and getting approval

• Understand all the categories and what’s included in each.  Watch for occasional changes from the previous year.
• When asked for a budget proposal, go in with your high plan and have a smaller plan in your pocket.  This is the correct strategy for both capital and operating requests.
• Be able to defend every line item.  Tie budget requests to organizational outcomes that no one disagrees with.
• Call out non-uniform spending that you can forecast (e.g., particular events and one-time payments).  Many finance systems by default spread annual budget uniformly over the months.  Some financial reports highlight month-by-month variance and make it look like a bad thing. 
• Front-load your planned expenses in the 1H of the fiscal year wherever possible.  Three years out of four you’ll be asked to trim 2H spending to hit a fiscal target. 
• Build a budget plan that supports your team’s ability to deliver good work, even when trims are necessary.  Fight to keep money in the budget plan for training and helpful travel.
• Make peace with the fact that you aren’t going to be told everything you’d like to know, and move forward.  

Monitoring budgets and managing through the year

• Monitor monthly reports.  Put time on your calendar to do so.  Get answers to your questions.  Get those answers before anyone else asks you, especially your boss.
• Encourage your team to be spending-smart.  The cheapest way is not always the best choice…but at least it should have been reviewed as a choice.
• In a downturn, cut more aggressively rather than being the laggard.  If you created your budget plan correctly you already had ideas about how and where to make cuts.
• Be mindful of the fully-loaded costs of decisions.  Promotions, salary increases, mid-year hires, and depreciation have future year impacts.
• Generate options for what you would do with savings or reallocated funds.  Those monies go to people with articulate use cases.
• The purpose of a budget is to deliver value to the organizations. It’s generally ok to be a little over-budget if you delivered kick-ass results, but better to be slightly under-budget.  Being wildly under-budget hurts your credibility.

Getting help

• Cultivate relationships with Finance colleagues; they want to help you!
• Require direct reports who have budget tracking responsibilities to give you reviews and updates.  Don’t assume; trust and verify.  
• Find people who are truly good with budgets to assist you as you move into more senior roles with broader scope of responsibilities.  This talented person is a crucial ally.  Never forget, however, that you are responsible for the budget.

I’m as prone to “bad days” and “crappy attitude” moments as anyone else.  These have near 100% correlation with focus-on-myself.  (Journaling helps you see this pattern, and your triggers.)

I invite people to do this experiment:

Step 1.  Focus your eyes on your belly button.

Step 2. Run as fast as you can.

(Please try this experiment in a soft grassy area.)

Focusing up and out is the key for me. Helping people shift their focus up and out is strong leadership work. 

It was a heartfelt cry, not a statement: “I’m lonely.  I’m really lonely.”  His face wrenched tight, and he peered hopefully into my eyes.  I’ve seen the look before.  I’ve been there myself.

He’s not the first leader to wrestle with the reality of loneliness in challenging leadership transitions.  He’s not alone in thinking “Why did I expect leadership to be wonderful?”  He’s not the first to wonder how he was misunderstood or misrepresented.  He, like so many, ponders who he can talk with about these deep feelings without people losing confidence in his leadership.

The truth: Loneliness is necessary to effective leadership.  The challenge is to embrace loneliness as a gift, rather than fight against it the wrong way. Every leader faces loneliness.  Many try the wrong approaches to escape loneliness, to the point of abdicating leadership roles when we desperately need them to lead. 

Leadership forces a structural kind of loneliness by design.  You need a kind of distance from a group to lead them well.   Leaders need to know their people but avoid being sucked into the crowd.  Former peers often misunderstand why a leader acts differently than they did “before.”  Leaders often feel alone and distant, even when surrounded by others and busy with all kinds of good work.

Loneliness is not optional, even if you display a brave social face.  Certain decisions come down to YOU.  Your only choices are to decide or abdicate.  Those decisions, and your behaviors, will occasionally be misunderstood and misrepresented by some people.  These realities create an inevitable loneliness.

Loneliness is the common experience for all leaders.  Winston Churchill could not have successfully led Britain in WW2 had he not endured a lonely decade of preparation, operating out of power and influence after being blamed for the disaster at Gallipoli.  Abraham Lincoln’s letters show he was intensely lonely during the American Civil War, faced with horribly difficult decisions. Steve Jobs learned during his lonely exile from Apple after his board of directors fired him; those lessons and greater self-awareness were vital to his success when he returned to Apple.  These are dramatic examples in history. There are a million more “ordinary” leaders who endured significant loneliness and later became deeply grateful for it.   

Avoiding loneliness is hazardous.  Of course, you should have friendships and mentors.  Of course, you should pursue healthy solitude, to improve your capability to be truly with people to serve them well.  Yet, you’ll still experience loneliness.  Avoiding loneliness leads to greater problems:

• Lying to yourself about loneliness is not a growth strategy.  Seek to be a better truth-teller than a better liar.
• Denying your loneliness distorts your ability to appropriate assess your behavior, and the behavior of others.  It’s also a slippery path into depression.
• Numbing your loneliness with alcohol, drugs, and distracting entertainment is, at best, deferring your need to deal with reality.  Numbing always creates secondary consequences which make problems harder to solve. You’ll hear people say, ‘Kick the can down the road, and deal with it later.’  It’s not a can that will eventually rust away.  You’re kicking a grizzly bear cub that grows up and gets meaner by the day.
• Whining about your loneliness won’t help (and simply demonstrates your immaturity).   Wallowing in your loneliness is refusing to learn what it can teach you and resisting its ability to help transform you as a leader.

Find purpose and meaning in the loneliness!  Embrace it as a gift, rather than fight it as a horror.  Gird yourself and stand firm.  Lean into your lonely moments. Expect loneliness to be hard AND worthwhile.

The transforming power of loneliness

Loneliness keeps our pride in check and gives us space for honest self-assessment.  You have strengths and weaknesses, assets and vulnerabilities. During the lonely times you discover your true friends and allies. What others think (or we imagine they think) becomes less important. Loneliness done well, not bitterly, helps us be more generous with people even as we see their masks and insecurities.  We recognize the loneliness of others with empathy.

Loneliness is a crucible for clarifying your vision and calling.  Loneliness forces us to evaluate our bedrock principles.  The intensity of loneliness is a powerful filter for signal from noise and clamor.

Lonely times are preparation for future leadership.  We get space to process our emotions, so we can accept new challenges.  Especially as we anticipate a coming difficulty, we need time before we can say, “Let’s go.  Bring it on.”  Loneliness expands our ability to be effective while we’re uncomfortable.  Loneliness is practice strengthening our minds, hearts, and sinews for even harder fights to come.

Finally, perhaps most importantly, loneliness shapes your relationship with God — the only Person who knows your fears, doubts, and pain.

Seven practical helps during the lonely times:

1. Say “thank you” aloud, even as you ache and weep inside. 
2. Share your thoughts only with highly trusted people who have experience to understand and appreciate the challenge
3. Read biographies.  Speak with other leaders.  Remind yourself that every leader experiences loneliness.
4. Journal.  Writing is cathartic and clarifying.  Journaling is a means of interacting constructively with your thoughts and experiences.
5. Pray and meditate.  These ancient practices are good for you.
6. Take long walks and exercise get your blood flowing.  You’ll process strong emotions better.
7. Avoid addictions which distract or numb you.

Embrace loneliness as a gift that transforms you into a better leader for bigger challenges.

We humans interpret the present and make decisions based on our personal experiences and how we frame the past.  A large part of our worldview is essentially a narrative about the past – what happened, why, who were the good guys, and who were the bad guys.  Let’s walk through history to see the power of narrative, and then pivot to organizational leadership.

An ironic quip in the Soviet Union:  “We are certain of the future. The past is always changing.”  In 1981 I asked my college friend Sergei about Stalin and Khrushchev;  he acknowledged they had done evil things.  I asked him about Brezhnev, the premiere at that time. He shook his head, replying, “I don’t know, he hasn’t died yet.”

Indeed, apart from mathematics and some scientific disciplines specifically useful for weapons programs, the USSR regime brutally suppressed any historical information that did not fit their preferred narrative.  Maoist China did the same thing.  I witnessed this pattern first-hand in Venezuela in 2002-2004.  George Orwell made the theme of a totalitarian state controlling the narrative about the past a central element in his novel 1984.   The main character destroyed facts about the past by tossing them into the “memory hole.”  Communist and Fascist leaders alike know that governing the narrative about the past is crucial to maintaining control.  Many people have observed that the dominant history is written and passed along by the victors.

The pattern is not limited to “evil” authoritarian governments. The US, France, Germany and Japan all shaped how the history of WW2 is taught in their schools.  Today Americans shudder at the conquest ethic and the colonial practices of Western European nations (which were commonly done by every expansionist empire for thousands of years, on at least 4 continents).  Many settled peoples were killed or forced off “their” lands, and exploited.  It was a practice going back in related forms for several thousand years on at least five continents.  Near where I grew up the Shawnee and the Delaware tribes were displaced as European settlers moved west past the Ohio River.  The frequently warring Shawnee and Delaware had pushed out several other tribes from the area about 120-150 years earlier.  There are large earth mounds at Marietta, Ohio from a sophisticated civilization that predated the Shawnees by about 2400 years, built on top of what looks like an even older agricultural community site.   In all these kinds of situations, where do you start and stop your timeline to form the narrative about who is good and who is bad, and what happened why?

What narrative gets told and is accepted about the Industrial Revolution, pollical events in the 20^th century, labor unions, mercantilism, corporations, “Robber Barons” (or “Industrialists”) like Andrew Carnegie and John Rockefeller, the racism and religious beliefs of country founders and prominent leaders, the role of judges, protests against standing laws and governments, entertainment, books, medical practices, and on and on and on?  Consider how much energy and effort goes into political campaigns to control the narrative.  I once interviewed a political consultant who said that when a campaign gets a voter to cherish a preferred narrative, it would very difficult for anyone to persuade them otherwise.  Labels and group names are powerful tools in shaping a narrative about the past.  The narratives can and will be re-shaped over the years as well. 

A useful test is to ask “Had the historical events turned out differently, what narrative would be told?”  If Gandhi’s efforts had not led to end of the British Raj, what stories would be treasured about him?  If Abraham Lincoln had not held the US together, would there be a massive monument with his likeness in Washington, D.C.?  These illuminate the “who benefits” question.

Another lesson from historical narratives: Most people gravitate to simple narratives that leave out messy details.  Read “Mein Kompf” and you’ll see how Adolf Hitler narrowed the downfall of Germany to an impossibly narrow set of causes, and ultimately persuaded millions of people to “forget” well-known truths about what had happened in their lifetimes. 

Your organization, your industry, your competitors, and your customers all have narratives.  A subset are cherished by one “side” or another. 

Historical narratives are a ubiquitous part of business:

• Every time there is a change in leaders, be aware of the narratives.
• Every reorganization becomes a narrative story.  Often there is a campaign to reframe the past in a particular narrative.
• Often two groups inside a company or non-profit shape a historical narrative about the other, and both are partially correct. 
• Older organization members selectively shape the “we used to be…” or “in the bad/good ‘ol days we did…” stories.
• Every top-down change initiative must manage competing narratives to “capture” hearts and minds.
• Every negotiation (with vendors, partners, and portfolio priority stakeholders) has underlying historical narratives.
• Customer experiences either reinforce or scrape against a narrative.

Strong leaders, aware of the power of narrative, consciously use it in persuasion.  Even when you are aware of revisionist history narratives, you can still be victimized by them.  Be particularly aware of the simplistic narrative that leaves out nuance and inconvenient facts. 

Sometimes the world changes dramatically in the middle of your project or change program, to the point where you question what should happen next. 

An excellent historical example occurred during the Lewis & Clark expedition from St. Louis as they searched for a water route to the Pacific Ocean.  They were commissioned in 1804 by President Jefferson and had the best of men and supplies for the expedition.  The expedition took their keelboat up the Missouri River, and then up tributary after tributary for over a year.  Then they reached the Continental Divide at the Rocky Mountains.  No more river route.  You can’t canoe over the Rockies.

Lewis, the leader, still wanted to get to the Pacific.  The native tribes told him that it was only a 3-day journey over the mountains and then there was a big river that flowed west.  The expedition struggled for six weeks getting over the Bitterroot Mountains – one the most rugged areas in North America, by any measure – at the beginning of winter.  They hauled all their supplies and a large boat over multiple mountains, including a 7200-foot pass.  Most of their horses died from exposure.  Lewis didn’t lose any men (one man had died much earlier, in what is now Iowa) and eventually they were able to make their way to the Columbia River and reach the Pacific Ocean.   They endured a hard winter on the coast, then made the return journey to St. Louis.

(The L&C expedition is a remarkable study in leadership.  Their diaries are detailed but I recommend Stephen Ambrose’s more readable account, “Undaunted Courage.”)

So what do you do when the world changes affect your mission or project?  Three options:

• Simply stop.  Thank people for their time and effort, wrap it up professionally, and move on.  This is far better than driving a project forward without changes.

• If the mission is intact, figure out how to adapt the tactics and program methods. Find successes in the interim work. 

• Pivot to a new direction for a [re]new[ed] purpose.  Lewis retained the mission of getting to the Pacific and exploring the lands between, even as he let go of the water route objective.

All three require skilled leadership – clear thinking, aligning work to priority, and constant communication with stakeholder up, down, right, and left.

There, I said it.  I detest the conventional “if you don’t finish every project YOU’RE A FAILURE” thing we say in our heads about others, and ourselves.

Hear me clearly, ok?  If you don’t finish critical-to-succeed projects, it’s a problem.  Starting, starting, starting, and never finishing anything is a problem. 

Reality: Some projects deserve to be stopped.  Some ideas don’t work out.  Some experiments tell you to try something else next time. 

Fact: The person who finishes every project is either themselves perfect (highly unlikely, dude!), a liar, or lacks the boldness to try risky new things.

A set of unfinished projects in your portfolio, along with those which yielded valuable results, is evidence you are trying, iterating your way through work that matters.

Bonus: Some of those unfinished projects will come around again in the future, and you can return to them when the time is right.

I’m an info-junkie.  Getting more information gives me a peculiar kind of rush; I don’t saturate easily.

This creates a problem. I must fight the temptation to read/listen/watch more than actually do and practice.  Books, podcasts, and videos take you to the brink of experience, but are not a substitute for experience and practice. 

I believe in continual learning and exploration.  The world is a big, exciting place!  Every craft and discipline goes deep and wide.  

Yet it is our behavior, not the breadth of our knowledge, which drives most of our success.  Repeatedly do what you know, and practice the core elements of your craft.  Bruce Lee reportedly said, “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who had practiced one kick 10,000 times.”  

It’s rarely a lack of knowledge which causes you to under-perform when it counts.