Success lies not in pointing out the problem, but in solving it.

It seems like most of the problems we face at work or home happen when two or more people disagree about how to accomplish something, or weather something needs to be accomplished at all.

Recently I was handling an issue where one person (I'll call him Jim) was frustrated with a fellow employee (I'll call her Barbara) because he believed Barbara was not doing her job and it had a direct affect on Jim's work. The problem was compounded because Jim is paid on commission and if Barbara doesn't pull her weight Jim doesn't get paid. Barbara is salaried, so Jim thinks she isn't motivated to work like he is.

Jim and Barbara were calling and emailing each other expressing their frustration and assigning blame. This lead to anger as Jim realized that his earning potential was in the hands of someone who he could not control and who didn't really care about his paycheck.

There is a solution to this problem, one that will not only fix the immediate issue, but will ensure outstanding performance between these two in the future. The solution begins with with the right objective.

The objective in this problem, and most problems, is not to identify why the problem exists. The objective is to determine what the solution to the problem is. There are those who disagree. They say that you must trouble-shoot the cause of the problem and fit it so that it doesn't happen again. For those of you who must think in terms of fixing problems rather than finding solutions I will put it another way. The objective is not to figure out who's to blame, rather to figure out how to achieve the right goal.

The point, either way is that pointing fingers, making accusations, and assigning blame don't help you resolve the problem. In fact they only make the problem worse.

In order to be successful in business or your personal relationships you must make a conscious decision to not care who's right or wrong, but to only care about achieving the right results. The difficulty in this is that it requires you to grow up! My children often say, "that's not fair!" We all know by now that life is not about fairness. In fact trying to ensure fairness is a sure path to failure. Moreover, when your thinking about weather something is fair, you're only concern is to make yourself feel better, not about achieving the desired goal.

So what do you do? I'll give you a quick and dirty outline of how to overcome these types of issues and to ensure success in the future.
1. Check yourself first
You must decide that getting the right result is what's important to you, not being right.
2. Decide what result you want
You need to have a clearly defined end goal (i.e. I want the new widget assembled and on my desk by 3pm Thursday)
3. Decide what the next action step is and who is to do it (I need to call Sally at 555-123-1234 to explain how the new widget needs to function)
4. You need to take action or follow up to ensure that the next action step was taken.
5. Do it all over again until the goal is met.

Those who must be right will never be successful. Those who have to blame someone else will never be successful. Only those to focus on solving problems will be successful.