How many boxes do you have?

Seth Godin is truly genius. And it’s not just because he says I don’t have to be perfect to succeed. The man just gets it. His recent post “Do you have 16 boxes?” http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/10/do-you-have-16.html puts it all in perspective. We can all sit around and focus on the failing economy and how the next 18 months are going to smell of the new-age-greater-depression or we can look at what’s happening around us and realize that good still exists – in our companies and in our personal lives. If you have built a strong foundation for your business, this economy simply cannot bring it to a screeching halt. Godin mentions that when something is going wrong, when the economy is out of sync, we panic. We obsess about just one of the sixteen boxes and ignore the others. We talk ourselves into hysteria about how, "none of our customers have any money," or, “in this bleak economy, we'll never make a sale." Instead of building up the other 15 boxes, we sit in the corner, worrying about that one box that's completely out of whack.

So let’s all focus on the 15 boxes that really, really work in our businesses and cut the conversation about things that are quite simply beyond our immediate control. Boxes are so much nicer that way.