Are You Influenced By Popularity Polls?

Have you owned, managed or worked for a company where you found yourself in constant contact with the customer(s)?

Were you elected to a government position through the balloting method?

Are you able to make decisions about changing your work flow process to immediate accommodate changes in the moment?

Are you a new parent?


How do you pay for your debts or ongoing costs of living?

Around the planet, unexpected emergencies arise.

History teaches us that, as incredulous as it sounds, ecosystems adjust to catastrophes.

I didn't hear or read President Obama's Oval Office address about the spreading oil pollution problem in the Gulf of Mexico (personal family issues prevail in my life right now).  However, I read today's headlines that the president announced a $20B deal with BP to fund recovery efforts while he's fallen in popularity.

I take partial responsibility for the oil pollution problem in the Gulf, being a petrol consumer who never regarded the oil industry's safety procedures.

But I have no guilt about this one.  My ignorance of a corporation ignoring safety concerns is no excuse for any lenient treatment of BP, no matter how much I understand the engineering challenge of drilling and pumping one mile under a body of high-pressure salt water.

I commend President Obama for pressing onward with the decisions his administrative teams have made with the choices available to them, despite public opinion pushing against them (in situations like this, you will NEVER please enough people).  We can't go backwards and change what's happened - we can only seek solutions for today and tomorrow.

I don't know how many years will go by before we see this ecological disaster as a historical event dimly remembered.

I do know that in the next few months other crises will creep into the mainstream news and feed our insatiable desire for something different to talk about while a core group of experts and volunteers will devote the rest of their lives to making the Gulf less toxic.

The current headlines espousing Obama's perceived ineffectual response to the BP industrial oil spill will be forgotten by all but a few diehard political historians.  Where Obama should be remembered is inspiring a new generation of young scientists, engineers, business leaders and "outside the box" solution providers who put their creative minds together and end the spill's longterm negative effects.

The company that figures out a profitable, environmentally-friendly way to capture free-floating oil might be the company that profits on the pickup of oil that constantly leeches out of the ocean/sea floor.

If you're the kind of person who always looks for solutions, then problems are your bread and butter, uninfluenced by the shifting winds of popular opinion.

We're free to have our opinions.  Let's discipline ourselves to turn our opinions into problem-solving.  I guarantee a future full of problem solvers is where I'll be.  How that polls doesn't matter to me.