This is my new niece, Stevie.
Isn’t she awesome?!
Born at the end of January, she arrived a few weeks early. Her story introduces this blog and reminds us why some things that are not-so-great in the moment can be amazing in hindsight.
Toward the end of January, my pregnant sister-in-law’s blood pressure began to rise, along with a few other concerning signs. The doctor monitored, but after little improvement, decided it was time to get the baby.
That began a 48+ hour saga of attempts to induce, breaking water, and painful contractions. Little Stevie was perfectly content, though, and after two days, it was time for a C-Section. After a few more days in the hospital, and with everyone doing well, mom and baby were released with no restrictions.
Wonderful news! So what?
Have I mentioned yet that Stevie’s original due date was February 19?
Beginning February 15, Texas experienced its worst winter storm in a century. Texans, of course, are woefully unprepared for winter weather, but this was something totally beyond that humorous observation. As parts of the state experienced record low single digit temperatures, critical infrastructure began to fail statewide, including icy closed roads, loss of electricity, and little to no water pressure following enormous numbers of burst pipes.
While baby Stevie’s home was not immune to some of these challenges, her family couldn’t help but be grateful that mom and dad were safely at home with her rather than trying to navigate icy roads traveling to a hospital without water for her birth. Suddenly the complications of her early arrival were a blessing in disguise.
Stevie’s story beautifully sums up what this blog, and indeed all of the work of CAE Solutions, is about: changing perceptions and creating solutions.
Solutions are easy if we get the problem right. Too often we spend all our time and energy trying to make things perfect, agonizing over whether this is right or will work, and delaying implementation out of fear of failure.
But what if we change our lens? What if, instead of searching for solutions, we look for the right problem? What if we use symptoms to guide us to the deeper, underlying issues? Nine times out of ten, we’ll waste fewer resources, find obvious solutions easily, and put it all into action quickly and with almost immediate results and feedback.
It’s true that hindsight is often 20/20, but hindsight is reactive. Our goal is to be proactive. Doing so requires changing perceptions to see problems as opportunities, challenges as surmountable, and, as Marcus Aurelius said, that “What stands in the way becomes the way.”[1]
I hope you’ll join us on this weekly journey to change perceptions and create solutions. It’s a journey that will ask us all to look at things differently, to seek the core problem, to create world-changing solutions, and to put them into action knowing that the way forward is through. Along the way, we’ll discuss things like strategy, problem solving, preparing for and thriving in crises, improving the meetings we spend so much time in, and being more productive.
I sincerely hope you find something interesting and valuable from these musings.
Perhaps even something that makes you stop in the moment and wonder, “could this ‘challenge’ end up being amazing in hindsight?”
Onward.
[1] See Ryan Holiday The Obstacle is the Way
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