Joe Speiser

Sam's temper fix: one 45-minute, written-in-advance complaint slot a week

Sam argues you rarely turn a weakness into a strength, so you build a system where it can't show. With his co-founder and CEO Joe, he can only raise business complaints or suggestions in one 45-minute weekly meeting, written out in advance, and by then most of the anger has faded.

“So with me, I've got a CEO, my co-founder Joe, And so we have set it up to where we only talk mostly about personal stuff throughout the day. But there's only one day of the week where I can come and complain to him or suggest improvements for the business. And that one day a week, it's only 45 minutes and I have to write it out in advance. And so because of that, I'll like see something and get pissed off and I'll be like, 6 days later when we talk about it, I'm like, I'm not actually that angry.”

Steal thisBatch your complaints to your team into one short weekly slot and write them down first; whatever still matters six days later is worth raising.