A Bottle of Cinnamon, a Two-year-old, and Two arrow Keys

Last night I had a classic parenting nightmare, er, I mean moment, that in reflection, has given me some sound business advice.

While working in my office, my daughter was entertaining herself in another room. At last look, that entertainment involved some story books. After getting off the phone, I checked on her to find, to my horror, that she had plucked ten keys off of my husband's laptop. After convincing her that this activity was "naughty", I found out that the keys snap back on relatively easily...except the arrow keys. Somehow these keys were different from the others and would not snap back on. She had only pulled one arrow key off, but I pulled another one off in order to have a model and to make sure the key wasn't actually broken.

What I have failed to mention is that during this time, my daughter proceeded to dump an almost-full bottle of ground cinnamon onto the kitchen carpet (and herself), destroyed the bathroom during the bath she was taking to clean the cinnamon off herself while I was working on the computer, and my dinner burned on the stove.


Although, you may have had moments like these in your personal life, you are probably wondering how this can be converted into sage business advice. Here is what I learned from this still not very humorous evening:

1. Put things away that you do not want others touching or seeing.
2. Sometimes others' well meaning intentions can bring disaster.
3. A difficult situation can be made much worse if everything else is ignored while trying to solve the original problem.
4. There is usually a point, when the best thing to do is just stop trying.
5. You cannot solve every problem with your own skills and brainpower.
   

In the midst of this tumult, my daughter brought me a small bowl full of the powdered cinnamon and said "I made you breakfast." She was doing something good, even though in the end it caused me a lot of trouble. In that moment I had to decide what was most important, disciplining her for the mess or playing along so she could grow positively. Luckily, I was able to choose the latter.

In our businesses, we will run into similar situations with our employees or clients. Situations that seem like the end of the world in the moment, but in reality can be managed quite well when given enough time. All this situation needed was 25 minutes of my husband's time. He was able to get the arrow keys back on in a fraction of the time that I spend attempting. May we all heed the business lessons I learned last night before our next disaster. And remember, there is no such thing as luck!