Wake Up!!!!

Here is a story that feel very close to my heart (... and maybe yours as well):

It's a story of a former partner and general manager of one of the foremost publishing houses in the United States, Leon Shimkin of Simon & Schuster. Here is his own experience in his own words (extracted from: "How to Stop Worrying and Start Living", Cargnegie, D")

For fifteen years I spent almost half of every business day holding conferences, discussing problems. Should we do this or that - or nothing at all? We would get tense; twist in our chairs; walk the floor; argue and go around in circles. When night came, I would be utterly exhausted. I fully expected to go on doing this sort of thing for the rest of my life. I had been doing this for fifteen years, and it never occured to me that there was a better way of doing. If anyone had told me that I could eliminate three fourths of all the time I spent in those worried conferences, and three fourths of my nervous strain - I would have thought he was a wild-eyed, slap-happy, armchair optimist. Yet I devised a plan that I did just that. I have been using this plan for eight years. It has performed wonders for my efficiency, my health and my happiness.

"It sounds like magic - but like all magic tricks, it is extremely simple when you see how it is done.

"Here is the secret: First, I immediately stopped the procedure I had been using in my conferences for fifteen years - a procedure that began with my troubled associates reciting all the details of what had gone wrong, and ending up by asking 'what shall we do?' Second, I made a new rule - a rule that everyone who wishes to present a problem to me must first prepare and submit a memorandum answering these 4 questions:

1. What is the Problem?

2. What is the cause of the problem?

3. What are all possible solutions of the problem?

4. What solution do you suggest?

The result:

My associate rarely come to me now with their problems. Why? Because they have discovered that in order to answer those four questions they have to get all the facts and think their problems through. And after they have done that they find, in 3/4 of the cases, they don't have to consult me at all, because the proper solution has popped out like a bread popping out from an electric toaster. And when discussion is needed, it will take about one third the time formerly required.

The place where I work, it has been going another way around... Sad, but it's true. Oopss... Someone has started opening a whole basket of worms. Good luck!