Dear friend,
First, let me admit I am a day late with this one, having promised it to you every Tuesday. Breakdowns are bound to happen, which is, fittingly, exactly what I want to write to you about.
Whether it is a key employee leaving, an investor pulling back, AI bearing down on your business, or the loss of your own job, there is one thing you can count on at work: breakdowns are inevitable. But what is a breakdown? Simply a satisfaction promised or expected and not delivered. It will happen. And yet most of us are caught off guard each time, unsure what to do in the heat of the moment, sometimes panicking and making the whole thing worse. That incapacity is one of the great wastes at work. So let us get right to it.
There are three dead-simple, remarkably effective steps for dealing with a breakdown: declare it, open conversations about new possibilities, and mobilize action. Let me take each in turn.
First, declare the breakdown. Do not avoid it. Complaining, blaming, and cursing get you nowhere; the simple, powerful act of declaring lets you admit that there is a problem and that you may not yet know how to solve it. In declaring it, you take responsibility for your dissatisfaction, and instead of merely venting you can begin to act. The declaration opens the space for new possibilities.
Second, resist the urge to leap straight into action. First consider the possibilities, in conversation: for diagnosis, for solutions, for what could be. Skip this and you risk hyperactivity, and hyperactivity can kill every dream, project, and possibility it touches. Talk with trusted allies, mentors, colleagues, your people, your bosses. Explore what is really going on. You will often learn something unexpected about the breakdown, and about what is possible, and you will enroll others into a new future as you go.
Third, so that you do not become a mere dreamer of possibilities, the person with wonderful ideas that go nowhere, turn to conversations for action. Assess who can help. Make requests and offers. Negotiate out of care for your concerns. Commit to act, ask others to commit, deliver, and satisfy yourself and the people you serve.
Loop through these three steps as many times as it takes, and a breakdown becomes a breakthrough. But a breakthrough is only possible if you own the breakdown. So if you are unhappy at work, in your career, or in your business, own your dissatisfaction, take these three steps, and let me know how it goes.
With care,Saqib