The Colonel was very much a “cut to the chase” kind of thinker. He said, “Cut through the emotion, eliminate the ego, cut out the clutter and the answer will usually be there.”
Dad was adept at slicing through irrelevant details to get at the core of the situation. (Because of this, I was rarely able to bamboozle him with a good story to avoid getting in trouble.)
When I was in school, Dad would often help me with my homework. (Math was never easy for me.) As I was struggling with fractions, Dad explained that understanding fractions was simply a matter of cutting out the clutter, by taking each fraction down to its simplest form – the lowest common denominator.
He used the same process when tackling a seemingly complicated question or problematic situation. He taught me that solving and resolving anything is a simple matter of trimming the clutter.
Often, that clutter begins with emotions. If you are not in control of your emotions, you are incapable of looking at a situation objectively. Inflated egos often create clutter as well. Whatever the situation or the question is, trim it down to its simplest form.
It’s like unraveling a knot one thread at a time. Some problems will take longer to unravel than others, but the process is valid regardless of the complexity.
Significant leaders know that unknotting a gnarled situation requires that we take the “I,” the “you,” and the emotion out of the situation. Trim the question down to its lowest common denominators – anything that is absolute fact in a situation – and the answer is usually there.
