Alan Weiss’s Monday Morning Memo® – 4/29/13
April 29, 2013—Issue #188
This week’s focus point: When my daughter was young, she used to call “instructions” by another name: “destructions.” And watching me assemble a bike or replace flashlight batteries at times certainly merited the latter. Yet complexity was one fiftieth then of what it is now. I received a video instruction kit for my pool vacuum, and a 30-page manual for my electric toothbrush. A third of these are warnings, another third are technical specifications, and the final third are abstruse instructions that could only have been created by an engineer consulting a lawyer. We need to use our judgment, intellect, and common sense far more. I didn’t have to teach my dog, Bentley, how to fetch a ball. Learning to ride a bike is totally experiential. I could read the Bible faster than my car’s owner’s manual. Let’s give ourselves a break, exercise our brains, and not turn the simple into the complex. That applies to our relationships, help, and learning as well. It’s not “garbage in, garbage out” these days. It’s “garbage in, garbage gets stuck and clogs everything up.”
Monday Morning Perspective: Thirty percent of the people love life and fear death. Thirty percent of the people prefer death and avoid life. Thirty percent of the people fear both life and death. Only ten percent of the people have the wisdom to accept both life and death as facts, and simply enjoy the dance of existence. — The Tao of Leadership
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Dennis Snow
I am often challenged by organizations that overcomplicate issues to the point that they are frozen, unable to make a decision. There are those who wallow in complexity – usually department heads who must justify the importance of their “complex” work. True decision makers, on the other hand, seem grateful for outside assistance in simplifying things.
Alan Weiss
The insecure want the complex to validate themselves. The bold realize that only results validate and anything in the way of results should be minimized.