Give 'Em the Damn Fish

A lot of our tasks are simply beyond our ability. No matter how hard I work at it, I will not produce a mistake-free text in Finnish anytime soon. I'd love to say that if I put the work in, I'll be able to do it a year from now. But I need a text that is perfect right now. After I send it, then we can talk about my learning to fish!

In my long career in helping businesspeople do a better job of communicating, I’ve always bought into the old adage, generally attributed to Lao Tzu, that giving someone a fish is short-sighted; we should instead teach them to fish. That meant I refused to translate from their language if they asked the meaning of a word.  In order to learn the process rather than simply get a result, we needed to figure out, in English, what the word meant. That meant being excited about small steps in the hopes that lots of small steps add up to great things.

Well, no more!

I’m now a grumpy old man who needs to see results tomorrow. I want to give you the word that works, not hint at it and spend 20 minutes waiting for you to figure it out. I want to say “No – that’s not the best way to say that; it should be this…” I want to return your texts with advice that you can act on right now.   

Give ‘em the damn fish to solve the immediate problem and move on!