What are you complaining about?
Maybe it was your rant yesterday during the Board meeting or the mumbling and muttering you did on the way into work this morning…. but I KNOW you are complaining about something… even if it’s only in the privacy of your mind.
What is it?
Not enough time to get everything done? Your wife’s nagging? Unrealistic shareholder expectations? Your teenage daughter’s weird friends? The nose dive your stock portfolio took over the past several months? The irritating co-worker that takes credit for your ideas?
What are you complaining about?
Complaining is common. You probably think you know all about complaining.
But did you know that complaining is the missing link between success and satisfaction? Success doesn’t buy satisfaction. It’s one thing to be successful and another thing entirely to be SATISFIED.
Yep, that’s right. Your complaints hold the secret to turning success into satisfaction. The MBA in me likes to call it Exploiting the Theory of Complaints.
To understand my Theory of Complaints, let’s take a quick look at well known biz school favorite, The Theory of Constraints.
The Theory of Constraints suggests that what stands between you and achieving your goals are the bottlenecks – or constraints – in your process. Simply put, by identifying these bottlenecks and permanently removing them, you achieve greater success more quickly. If you want to learn more about it, google business guru Dr. Eliyahu M. Goldratt. There are oodles of info on this management philosophy.
Back to Cannon’s Theory of Complaints…
My Theory of Complaints says that what stands between success and satisfaction are complaints. Stands to reason, doesn’t it? Regardless of your success, it’s pretty darn near impossible to be truly satisfied if you are complaining.
Consider this. Complaining is a signal that something is not right. A complaint arises because some need is not being met. You’ve got an itch that is not being scratched.
No matter how successful you are, you are not going to be truly satisfied if you, your life or your business are being held hostage by an unmet need(s).
The unmet need creates tension in your experience which, in turn, leads you to vent, kvetch or bellyache to relieve the tension. Unfortunately, the relief is temporary at best unless you identify the underlying unmet need and take action to fill it permanently. Think about it like having a cavity in your tooth. Until you fill it permanently, the little monster is going to keep bothering you and getting bigger… even if the rest of the world only sees your sparkling pearly whites.
And, just like pesky cavities, unmet needs can be hard to see unless you have x-ray vision, one of those odd little dental mirrors or the keen vision of someone else. The quickest way to find the unmet need and create a strategy to fix it, is to enlist the help of a trusted advisor, mentor or coach.
Bottom line: Remove your constraints to be successful and resolve your complaints to be satisfied.
There’s no sweeter spot than being successful AND being truly satisfied.