- GarthBox

No house listing has ever included a photo of the neighbors. You get the kitchen, the backyard at golden hour, the bathroom from its one flattering angle. The people next door are the only feature nobody can stage.

In our last neighborhood, we used to daydream about the next one. A street where we’d connect with people over shared interests. Somebody two doors down who could turn a walk to the mailbox into forty minutes. We moved, and we were pretty sure that’s what we’d bought.

It flopped. (I have since learned you can’t return a street.)

That’s about the easiest complaint a person can make, and I know my own move by now. Catch it, kick it, swap in something grateful.

Read the complaint slowly first. We wanted to connect with our neighbors. We wanted shared interests. That’s the most specific thing we’ve ever said about where we want to live. The square footage never got a sentence that good. Of everything that came with the move, the complaint was the only part with a blueprint.

It also changed the verb. Before, we were shopping for a neighborhood. Now we have something to look forward to creating at the next place we move. Better job.

Which is a little embarrassing, because I run a bar whose entire job is turning strangers into regulars on purpose. Bottle shares, a run club, beertenders who remember what you told them last time. I would never expect a bar to do that by itself… and I expected a street to.

Teams hand their leaders this same sentence all the time. We don’t have the tools. Nobody told us what this is for. The reflex is to kick it for them, with a pep talk that shows up before the complaint finishes. Positive was never supposed to mean quiet. Kick a complaint and you keep the want and lose the blueprint, and the want goes somewhere you can’t hear it.

Read it back to them as a build. That complaint is their first draft of the thing they’d most like to make, and they wrote it for free.

The next street won’t come with it either. It’ll have a kitchen, a backyard, a bathroom with one good angle. This time we’re not shopping for the rest.

Stay Positive & We’re Packing The Complaint