Your Ultimate Success Plan

Chapter 7Vent With a Purpose

Never tell your problems to anyone… 20% don’t care and the other 80% are glad you have them.

—Lou Holtz¹

Mission Statement

Don’t taste the “whine.”

In the 2006 movie classic The Devil Wears Prada, most audience members sympathized with the put-upon young fashion assistant, Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway), and hated the magazine’s demanding editor-in-chief, Miranda Priestley (Meryl Streep). I didn’t! As a boss, I’d hired too many Andys and could relate to the film’s illuminating dialogue between Andy and her immediate supervisor:

Andy:  She hates me, Nigel.

Nigel:  And that’s my problem because…oh wait. No, it’s not my problem.

Andy:  I don’t know what else I can do because if I do something right, it’s unacknowledged. ...