Can you create solutions when there are seemingly impossible problems? Great managers need to find solutions when other people aren’t necessarily even aware of the problem or room for the improvements.

Take for example the problem that once faced owners of payphones. Generally in the US, you put in a couple of quarters and can chat for as long as you want. Some people would take serious advantage of this and talk for long periods of time minimizing the company’s profits. In other countries there is a time limit associated with an amount of change. So how can a company increase the profits without losing a competitive edge?
(I’ll tell you how they solved this problem at the end of the article, see if you can figure out a solution.)

This phone company was able to increase the number of people that use the phone in the same amount of time, a feat that some people considered impossible. Not a whole lot is actually impossible if it is something that you put your mind to.

If you can make a better hamburger than McDonalds, but you don’t, then it is a useless skill. “Until we tap our latent abilities, we are only shadows of what we might be.” – Blaine McCormick.

This post’s ideas has for the most part come from Blain McCormick’s book, “Ben Franklin’s 12 Rules of Management” This segment is chapter 9 of the book. I am currently reviewing the book one chapter at a time.

—Payphone solution—
How would you have increased the revenue and solved the impossible payphone problem? Would you and your team have come up with a solution?
What this company did was put weights in the handsets. Then during long calls, they would get more and more uncomfortable causing people to end the call sooner. What was your solution?