How to Solve Problems in 8 Easy Steps

July 21, 2009

Learning to become a proficient problem solver is the key to becoming a successful manager or entrepreneur. That is because problem solving is at the heart of the planning process. Read more

Stop Planning and Start Acting

April 23, 2009

A while back, I attended a seminar to hear a career coach talk about ways to build your career. She said something that stopped me in my tracks. It should have been obvious but it was one of those light-bulb moments for me. So let me share it with you and hope that it has the same effect on you. Here’s what she said, Read more

• Try Different — Seth Godin

  The usual mantra is to 'try harder'. Trying harder is impossible when you're already trying as hard as you can.

  But you can always try different.

  Years ago, I was creating trivia questions for a product we built for Prodigy. We had a 99% accuracy rate in doing the questions. Which was great, except there were 1800 questions in a batch, which meant 18 wrong each time, which was totally and completely unacceptable. These were honest mistakes, made by smart people working as hard as they could.

  No matter how hard we tried, we couldn't do better than 99%. So we switched our system completely and did it in a totally different way. Same number of people, same number of hours, 100% accuracy.

  If it's not working, harder might not be the answer.

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