Problems in Three Countries

I haven't been blogging for a variety of reasons lately. I need to really blog about why I'm not blogging, but that's a story for another day.

Today was a unique day, I worked on challenges in three countries today, not including the USA, where I sit. That included three continents too. I like to imagine that I'm a global citizen, an international businessman, and on some spectrum I am. Yet, it's not easy!

Business, like life, is full of decisions, and there are many possible directions. Deciding which way to go is challenging. I knew an entrepreneur who regularly said, "people are desperate for leadership" and it struck me as a strange thing to say. Big companies seem full of managers and senior level people.

In all three situations I was involved because people thought I would contribute, if not lead, to the best direction for us to take. The truth is, I don't know. It's one of my favorite sayings. The decisions seems to be 70% chance we get what we want, 90% chance we get what we want, and 99% chance we get what we want, of course we went with the conservative 30% on the first decision. I've come to understand statistics and probabilities much better over the past several years. Decision making is never 100%, if it was there would be no decision to make.

Getting back to the title, every culture (both country wide and the micro culture of a town or factory) is different. We don't all communicate the same, have the same priorities and pressures, and I struggle to know, especially when calling three other countries in one day, how well we are all really communicating, and accomplishing the bigger mission of distinctive quality, while also remaining as profitable as possible.

That's life.