Stop Putting Up with the Unreasonable

<p dir="ltr">Each year, in Lahore, Pakistan, the Punjab Youth Festival features a variety of extreme and odd competitions. In one, martial arts practitioner Mohammad Rashid set a new speed record for breaking walnuts by smashing his forehead on them, the walnuts lined up on a table, he smashing his head down from a leaning position: 155 walnuts shattered in 60 seconds. </p> <p dir="ltr">I hold the slow record for banging one’s head against things. </p> <p dir="ltr">It’s a fair description of much of my business life. But it is also an exercise I strive to avoid and have gotten better and better and better at doing so, as years have passed. </p> <p dir="ltr">Just for example, I recently declined a potentially high value, ‘whale’ referral from a friend – gently explaining that I was not interested in big, dumb companies run by committees, where I would have to start convincing skeptics. </p> <p dir="ltr">Reaching way, way back in time, I was, even then, fairly decisive and quick about exiting bang-head-against-wall situations. After the successful guy I was working for sold his company to a publicly listed Australian corporate I pretty quickly exited and I switched to a business using many of the same skills and strategies, but where my pay relied only on others’ consumption. </p> <p dir="ltr">As a consultant, the first time I fired a client was in 2007, when I could ill afford it financially. The last time I fired a non-compliant client was about 10 weeks ago.</p> <p dir="ltr">No matter how cautious, tough-minded, avoidance-minded and swift sword swinging, overall, in a broad sense, my time has still been about banging my head against walls.</p> <p dir="ltr">The business of getting other people to think better yields something between a 1% and 5% success rate. It’s 95% exercise in futility. And that leaves lumps. They never completely recede either. </p> <p dir="ltr">A lot of businesspeople unnecessarily bang their heads against walls, in many different ways. You have to be ever-vigilant, stop yourself or catch yo