Common sense solutions need help!

We must stop criticizing and start working on solutions.

Criticism is everywhere. If I owned a patent on criticism, I would be one rich dude. You don’t need to watch TV or read the newspapers; find a place to sit and listen. What do you hear? People are more interested in criticizing the actions of others. They spend no time on how or what could be done to solve the issues in contention. They seem to like complaining. Maybe this is the engineer in me, but it often feels like people have a list of grievances they want to be aired.

You might be wondering what’s wrong with this. “Who cares if I like to criticize the actions of others?” Let me gently turn your attention to the world around us. It feels like “we, the people,” are becoming unhinged. All we want to do is argue and have word fights, most typically over unfounded issues or ones based on false information.

But what would happen if we focused our energies on common sense solutions.  We don’t know what they are, as we don’t seem to be implementing them anymore. Specifically, I’m talking about solutions to common everyday problems.

Please know that I’m writing this to every living, breathing soul; your neighbors, friends, and people who make up this world. To those of us who sit around the picnic table or evening bonfire, drinking beer, laughing with each other, having fun enjoying each other’s company. To our families who get together for the holidays. This is about US! And yes, if any politician wants to read this, they should know this applies to them in a colossal way!

My father taught me at an early age how to express myself. Especially if I didn’t like what we were doing and came to him critical of that activity. He taught me a very different process, one that when I started to implement it, the issues I wanted to complain about, simply disappeared. He was a WWII vet and didn’t waste time talking, often citing General Patton, whom he served under. His words of wisdom were this: If you’re so smart to see that something is wrong, then you ought to be smart enough to suggest how to fix it, and if you can’t see how to fix it, or make it better, then don’t say anything! And if you do see it, why aren’t you doing it? Once I understood that he wanted solutions, not a long list of issues, life was good.

Let this soak into your mind a bit longer. How do you, or your family, or your friends do in this area?

Let me give you this ridiculous example. If the handle snaps off your favorite coffee mug, do you ask why its broken? Do you blame someone for cracking the handle? Or do you just glue it back together? My dad would say, “fix the damn thing or throw it away. It’s milking time, and the pigs are hungry! Let’s go!”

A few years ago, the phrase “see something, say something” became quite popular. Let me suggest that this phrase is wrong and contributes to the “do nothing disease.” It should say, see something, DO SOMETHING, say something about what you have just done!

I believe it’s imperative that we start training ourselves to be more orientated around providing solutions. Let me give you an example. A few years ago, I managed a relatively large manufacturing organization. Lots of fork trucks moving material around the factory floor. As a result, “stuff” would always be on the floor. When I walked around the factory talking to my employees, I would quietly, without any fanfare, pick “stuff” up off the floor, just as a natural reaction, a behavior my father taught me. It also allowed me to be an example of what I was trying to teach my employees. My message was simple, if everyone picked “stuff” off the floor when they first saw it, there would never be anything on the floor. All employees knew this needed to be done, and we did it without complaining. Straight forward, common sense approach to keeping the factory clean. Do you think it worked?

It worked so well, that when I gave visitors a tour, they would start to notice me picking things up off the floor and would rush ahead to be able to pick something up before I could. It was fun to see and do. Everyone felt good because they were helping to improve the cleanliness and safety of our facility. And my employees would chuckle when they saw the visitors picking things up, then they would go searching for “stuff” on the floor.

A footnote for common sense purposes. If something you see is a dangerous situation for you or your loved ones, then your “do something” action should be to extract yourself from this situation. In fact, I always carried a napkin or two in my pocket as I walked the factory floor, just in case something looked unsafe to touch with my fingers.

While I believe using common sense comes natural to all of us, the definition I use, just for clarity is “common sense is the ability to think and behave in a reasonable way and to make good decisions.”

Here are some activities that you and your circle of influence can do:

1.        Practice listening without talking. Do this for a week or more, write down what you have learned, now tell someone.

2.        Read books and setup your very own book club within your group.

3.        Write out your thoughts and keep a diary. Periodically review what you have written, looking for things that you have learned, things that have changed since you first observed them.

4.        Have family debates; John F. Kennedy’s family practiced this, learning how to debate without anger, take the side of an issue opposite your current thinking, see what you learn about yourself and the issue.

5.        Ask your spouse/children about their day; only questions allowed are for seeking clarity. Watch them when they talk to see what their body language is telling you.

6.        No earbuds allowed when talking; your focus is on listening.

Talk to each other, listen to each other. Ask revealing/clarifying questions. Trust your intuition knowing that you see whatever you look for (read my last post for a great example of what happened to me). Help your children to become book smart and street smart as well.

Everyone will prosper and enjoy life!