The Key To New Year’s Resolutions

There’s a reason why only 8 percent of New Year’s resolutions are kept: Too many of us make resolutions that lack resolve.

“Resolve” is a powerful world. According to one dictionary, it means “to solve a problem, or to find a satisfactory way of dealing with a disagreement.”

Bill Gates elaborated on the concept in his 2007 commencement address at Harvard. He said the first order of business in resolving a problem is seeing it. Then all you need to do is cut through complexity, so you may solve it.

Gates made it sound easier than it is, of course. With virtually all large problems, simplifying complexity requires a great deal of work – a great deal of resolve.

Solving problems in the private sector is really no different than solving them in the public sector, or any sector, really – if your interest is in actually getting to the root cause of the challenge, so you may see and understand it, and then in coming up with a solution that produces real results.

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