In the real world of daily execution, lots of random nitty-gritty problems come up. Sometimes I laugh at how unlikely they are to ever be covered in a business or leadership book. Don’t get me wrong, I love theory and models. They help a lot. Sometimes the real world is just… different.

A few weeks ago I got a call from one of my managers: “The customer service team is leaving for the day. We think an animal died in the building somewhere, and it smells really bad. People are feeling sick and yeah, they’re leaving.”

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I wasn’t ready for that one. “Umm, ahhh, can we try to figure out where the smell is coming from?”

“A couple of the guys are looking in the crawl space, it’s pretty wet down there and they haven’t been able to find anything so far. We think it might be in the walls.” …

So much of success in business is overcoming the nitty-gritty obstacles — getting the daily work done even when things get in the way. That’s a mixture of expertise, creativity, and sheer persistence.

As a coach, I promise never to forget that those who launch and lead deal with some very un-theoretical stuff. Here’s to all of you who persist and succeed in the real world.