Have you ever had a problem, business or personal, that you don’t seem to be able to find your way around? Everyday life throws up plenty of them and sometimes we end up going around in circles while tearing our hair out trying to come up with a solution. These can be as seemingly insignificant as an inconsiderate neighbour or more challenging like a difficult colleague at work. Pig Wrestling: The Brilliantly Simple Way to Solve Any Problem… and Create the Change You Need by performance coaches Pete Lindsay and Mark Bawden could well be the assistance you’ve been looking for.
A relatively short read, Pig Wrestling uses the story of a young office manager who is having trouble getting his team to work in the way he wants them to. He meets a barista who works in the building and is introduced to the allegory of the pig pen. At first the young manager is completely baffled by the idea of applying his problems to an imaginary pig pen but the barista insists he stick with it and speak to various other business owners that reside in the building.
As he does that, the young manager starts to understand a different way to not only tackle, but to identify the real problems he’s facing giving him the best chance to come up with a solution that’s going to work long-term. The basic idea is that if you find yourself wrestling with a problem that you can’t get past, the chances are you’re wrestling with a pig. That means that you’re probably trying to tackle the wrong problem and the more energy you put into it, the less likely you are to get anywhere.
The pig pen allegory uses the idea that the pig enjoys being wrestled with because the more you wrestle with it, the dirtier it gets. Throughout the book the different characters the young manager meets reveal different parts of the pig pen diagram, equipping him with a logical and thorough way to work through his ‘pigs’. The book is helpfully illustrated with frequent summaries and recaps so you can absorb the information.
Once you’ve completed the book, and I recommend reading it multiple times, there’s a flow diagram at the back that takes you through the basic steps to wrestle a pig and succeed. When I began the book, I admit I was sceptical but the more I read, the more it made sense to me. I purposely took time with the book before reviewing it to test the pig wrestling way. I applied it to problems I was facing in both my business and personal life, and I’m pleased to say it really does work.
What Pig Wrestling highlights is that we as humans are so quick to jump to conclusions, believe other people without doing any investigation ourselves, and jump head first into a problem before looking at whether it’s actually the problem that needs tackling. The book encourages you to change the way you think and one of the most useful aspects was the crystal ball idea where you detail what your outcomes needs to be so you don’t get bogged down in the nice-to-haves along the way.
Pig Wrestling is an absolute gem of a book and I can’t tell you how helpful I’ve found it, and continue to find it. Once you get the Pig Wrestling steps in your head, problems become much easier to face and you can work through them in a constructive and logical way. One thing I will say is that problem solving is still tough but using this framework gives you the best chance of success. It’s a book that should be used in team building exercises and one that’s particularly useful to entrepreneurs.
Published by: Vermilion Publication date: 3rd January 2019 Buy Pig Wrestling
