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Tense Truth: There are no solutions to problems that do not require some kind of change. And there is no change that doesn’t create problems of its own. The solution is not to avoid change or eliminate problems. Rather, it is to anticipate future challenges with a solution-based mindset, even while we attack the problems of today.
John Miller, in his book, QBQ, The Question Behind the Question, tells the following story:
When Stacey was 12 years old, she and her father, a pilot, took off on a Sunday afternoon joyride in their single engine Cessna. Not long into the flight, and about a mile up over Lake Michigan, the joy of their father-daughter adventure came to an abrupt halt. Stacey’s father turned to her and in a calm, reassuring tone he said, “Honey, the engine has quit. I’m going to need to fly the plane differently.”
Like Miller, I love the phrase, “fly the plane differently.” It speaks of how problem solvers (read “leaders” here) approach changing conditions and frame crisis situations. He didn’t look for somebody to blame, bail out of the plane, or give up on the laws of aerodynamics. He also didn’t magnify the fear of the situation. He didn’t try to fix the engine! And most importantly, he didn’t stop flying.
He simply changed in response to a new set of information and a new horizon of challenges.
Tony Robbins on Problems
On a recent video blog, Tony Robbins said: [click to continue…]
Sittin’ here watching the bowl games, wondering – is this the fix we’ve been looking for?
Hardly…
I grew up fuming at the whole college bowl game situation. Too many conference/bowl tie-ups. Too many great teams (my favorite in particular) unable to play for a national championship, while every single other NCAA sport and division had some sort of playoff system.
The solution? What we have now as the BCS system, complete with
- uneven conferences being treated as all equal.
- four or five conference championship games that are either really meaningful or dangerous to a great team.
- other conferences (Pac 10, Big 10-actually-11, etc.) with no forced championship game, getting a free pass into the bowls.
- twice as many games so that everybody gets a chance – after all, we’re ALL winners, aren’t we? (We used to joke when a team had a lousy year that they were going to the Toilet Bowl. Now, lo and behold, we actually have a half-dozen of ‘em!)
- EVERY SINGLE bowl game of ANY type has a conference tie-up. “Big 10 #6 vs. SEC #8.” Are ya’ KIDDIN’ me? There is now no such thing as an at-large team.
- A single championship game decided a week-plus into January between a hybrid of two polls and a stack of computers. Four other BCS games bearing the same bowl names and locations, but lacking the same luster. (With all due respect to Cincinnati and West Virginia, really?)
Just for nostalgia’s sake, I thought I’d take this year’s year-end AP rankings and results, and see what they might produce in a 70s bowl scenario. Take a look and tell me, do you really think we’ve made things better? [click to continue…]
(A Turning Point Story)
If being a pastor is like living in a fishbowl, then being a pastor in Abbeville was like swimming in a churning aquarium.
Beneath a florescent light.
That never goes out.
Now this is no mystery to the folks there; fact is, I think some of them are pretty proud of it. We’d laugh about it when we weren’t crying about it or stamping out the latest edition of “I heard from a reliable source.”
I knew this wouldn’t be a typical assignment when I went for an interview weekend and Bobby Joe Espy opened the Q & A session by asking, “Preacher, how thick is your hide?” I don’t remember what I said – something lame about leading with my heart. But I remember that this was the first time I’d ever had a chill in my chest.
Now every small town presumes to know everybody else’s business, but here it was elevated to an art form. Here people knew what you were doing and told you about it. After they told somebody else about it first, of course. They told me when my lights were on too late at night, or too early in the morning. They told me when the grass behind the, uh, privacy fence was too tall. And they told me every single time anybody had something to say that was of a critical nature. In Abbeville they called it like they saw it. And sometimes if they didn’t see it, they made it up.
Don’t guess my hide was very thick.
David Peterson was a great friend, which was helpful, since he chaired the committee that brought me and my very young family to the Wiregrass region of southeast Alabama. [click to continue…]
Hungry? A couple of years ago a local institution here decided it was time for a second location. River Smith’s Chicken and Catfish had been serving up good food since 1976, and built a second restaurant on the south side of Lubbock.
Even though I grew up on the Gulf Coast, seafood isn’t usually on the top of my culinary agenda. In fact, I can count on one finger the number of times I craved seafood. So you can imagine my wife’s surprise when I said, on a Friday no less, “Let’s get seafood.” Then I remembered that River Smith’s had opened their new location, so I suggested we check it out.
I’m sure that wherever you live it’s probably the same way, but when a new restaurant opens in Lubbock, you may as well get ready for a wait. But it was after 8:00, and I figured maybe the movie crowd would have left by then.
Wrong. The place was packed. But we were pretty leisurely, and decided to go ahead and brave it. At River Smith’s, you order at the counter, and they give you a numbered buzzer that you place on a rack at your table so the server knows where to bring the order. I should have known there might be a problem when the lady that took the order had run out of buzzers and grabbed one from a different register. Nevertheless, we took our drinks and buzzer and somehow found a seat to wait.
And wait.
And wait some more.
Again, we weren’t in a hurry or even frustrated. But I did catch a server passing by and asked her if she could check on our order.
Impress me #1:
[click to continue…]
