“Challenge one: Believing that the solution you’ve got (the person you want to hire, the strategy you want to implement, the decision you want to make) is the one and only way to make the problem go away or take advantage of the opportunity.

Falling in love with your solution makes it incredibly difficult to see its flaws, to negotiate with people who don’t agree with you, to find an even better solution.

And, on the other side of the table…

Challenge two: When you find someone who is pitching a solution you don’t like, it’s tempting to deny that there’s much of a problem at all. After all, if you diminish the problem, you won’t have to accept the solution that’s on the table.

But of course, the problem is real. The dissatisfaction or inefficiency or wrong direction isn’t going to go away merely because we deny it.

It’s amazing how much we can get done when agree to get something done.”

• Seth Godin