Where There Is A Will, There Is A Way
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Where There is a will, There is a Way

Development Professional

An incident that occurred in a foreign land as narrated by a citizen. One winter night, a cyclone swept through the town, killing several people and doing millions of pounds worth of damage. Co-incidentally the next morning, I was passing by that town in my car. I stopped the car when I reached this affected town. I got out on the side of the high way and looked around. It was a mess. Everywhere I looked there were broken houses and cars turned upside down.

That same night, one of my friends, Henry Orwell, was also driving down the same highway. He stopped to look at the disaster just as I had, only his thoughts were different than my own. He was the president of a big television company, which had many television stations in the same area. He thought there must be something that could be done for these people through the television media they had.

The next day Henry came to me with one of his company directors, Mr. John Rudolf. They both informed me that there has to be something we could do to help the cyclone-affected people. Henry was very determined to do something.

The next day Henry called a meeting of all the employees of his company. One the chart facing everybody, he wrote 777 and said " How many of you would like to raise 7 million pounds in 7 days from today in just 7 hours and contribute to help the cyclone hit people.

There was nothing but silence in the room.

Finally someone said, "Henry, you’re crazy. It is impossible to do that".

Henry said, "Wait a minute. I didn’t ask you if we could do this or not, or even if we should do it. I just asked you if you’d like to."

They all said, “Sure, we’d like to".

He then drew a large T underneath the 777. On one side he write, ‘Why we can’t’ and on other side he wrote, ’How we can’.

Then addressing others he said "I’m going to put a big X on the ‘Why we can’t side. ‘We’re not going to spend any time on the ideas of why we can’t. That’s for no value. On the other side we’re going to write down every idea that we can come up with on how we can. We’re not going to leave the room until we figure it out. "There was silence again. Finally, someone said, "We could do a Star TV show across the State". Henry said, "That’s a great idea, "and write it down.

Before he had it written, someone said, "You can’t do a TV show across the State. We don’t have broadcasting rights all over the State." That was a pretty valid objection.

Henry replied, "That’s why we can. We can involve other TV channels in the program. So that stays." But this was a really strong objection because television channels were very competitive. They usually don’t work together and to get them to do so would be virtually impossible according to the standard way of thing.

All of a sudden someone suggested, “You could get top film actors and other reputed figures in the film industry to anchor the shown." At that point it was absolutely amazing how fast and furious the creative ideas began to flow.

Within two days of this meeting they contacted other channels and send them proposals to co-host this Star Night. The show was broadcasted all over the country. Eminent people from media and entertainment fields attended the show, and Henry and his team succeeded in raising 7 million pounds in 7 hours and in 7 working days.

You see, you can do anything if you put focus on how to do it rather than on why you can’t.

Whether you think you can or cannot, you are always right.

Focusing on how to do it, is the secret of success

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