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Here are two of my favourite questions on the way to finding a solution.

1. What if there was nothing? If you had to start from scratch, how would you do it? How would that differ from what you have now? So, why aren’t things looking like the model you would have built from scratch? What prevents the present from becoming like that? Tweaking and tinkering. looking for faults etc. only keeps you bound to the past. You need a fresh look. Imagining nothing is the first step to a fresh look.

2. What is you hay fever? Don’t believe the motivational literature that tells you everything is possible, everything can be changed.  There are things that can’t be changed, irritations in business like hay fever in your personal life. You can only manage the irratation. Don’t waste your time on wishful thinking, “Here’s the cure for hay fever!”  Things like marketers selling stuff technical people find impossible to deliver and neurotically pessimistic technical people that begrudge marketers their bullshit is an example of corporate hay fever. Never going to solve it. Live with it. Manage the tension productively.  There are numerous other such examples. ” Not enough communication in our company” is another one. Quickly asses what  hay fever is in the situation, quickly devise a scheme to manage it and pay your attention to the stuff that you really can change. Remember you can’t change nature, but you can navigate it! Yachtsmen can’t make the wind blow, but they can, by setting their sails properly sail even faster against the wind than with the wind. Great business lesson there!