Teams

Your business is dying.

Okay, that may not technically be true. It was meant to be a “grabber.” That said, it might be true.

You see, any business that isn’t continually coming up with creative solutions to business challenges is slowly dying. If it’s lucky. If it’s not lucky, it’s quickly dying.

There are three questions I like to use that will help you and your team unlock your creative brilliance and apply it directly to the challenge at hand. The three questions, ...

“Is it safe?”

If you’ve ever seen the movie Marathon Man starring Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier, you know just how scary this question can be.

It can be a scary question for your team as well (although without the unpleasant dental work—watch the movie if you’re confused).

When you’re leading your team through a high-pressure situation, they’re looking to you (I’ve written about this before). They’re looking to you…

• …to see what you’re going to do (how you’re going to solve the ...

“Your engine just quit. Where are you going to land?”

The voice came from the right-hand seat—the co-pilot’s seat.

Sounds dramatic, right? Actually, it was quite routine. The person in the right-hand seat was my flight instructor, and it was, like, the thousandth time he’d asked that question over the past few months. If you’ve ever had any flight instruction, you’ve probably heard this question as well. And probably more than once.

See, in flight training, you’re always preparing for the worst. (And, ...

“The confused mind says no.”

You’ve heard this before, right? It means that, when faced with too many options, the brain doesn’t make any decision and simply shuts down. This is why you will often see well-dressed people standing, zombie-like, in front of the mustards section of Whole Foods. Eventually, a Whole Foods employee will check the zombies’ wallets for IDs and arrange for Ubers to take them home, where a nice Pinot will bring them back to consciousness.

For those of ...

According to the traditional rules, I could never run for public office.

Not that I want to run for public office. I don’t! I’d be terrible at it. But my point is that, according to the traditional rules (which may not even be a thing anymore), I couldn’t run. That’s because, at some point during my campaign, some reporter would begin a question with:

“Mr. Stainton, isn’t it true that you once said…”

And my honest answer, even without hearing the rest of ...

Let me give you a hypothetical high-pressure situation.

You’re the pilot of a small, single-engine airplane. You take off, alone, in this single-engine airplane, and head out over a large body of open water. At about 800 feet above this water, your single engine starts to sound funny (and not in a “ha-ha” way), and you notice you’re not gaining altitude at the rate you should be. At around 1200 feet above the water, your single engine quits.

This is a high-pressure ...