Advice can be as toxic as large corporate environments.

There are a thousand books on the different approaches to getting stuff done in corporate America. They call for us to have fierce conversations, or get naked with our feelings or go toe to toe or climb into the lifeboat or sit knee to knee.

Do we really believe this? Why do we need to have body parts touching in order to be heard?

I was smiling as I wrote this thinking to myself, haha, is this the dog park equivalent of sniffing butts? …..sniff, sniff, sniff….wag tail…sniff, sniff, sniff….wag tail.

Doggie translation: ‘good to go…another new friend….I’ll send you some pee-mail. Are you on Dogbook?’

When we want and need to make some progress and just ‘get ’er done’, up here in the world of the two-leggeds, endless consensus building kills initiative.

Just stop. Find an elegant solution, make it work, don’t make war.

Here’s a great example. In Orbiting the Giant Hairball, about Gordon MacKenzie’s twenty year stint in the creative department at Hallmark, there’s a beautiful chapter that models elegant solution building.

In the hilarious chapter called, “Milk Cans Are Not Allowed” MacKenzie describes the debate, politics, and people antics behind a corporate RULE (“No milk cans in the building”) and an artistic REQUEST (“Using milk cans as wastebaskets”). This is a true story, I kid you not.

MacKenzie was the head of the creative department and needed to buffer the stifling corporate heaviness with a fun creative decor for his artists. He created a department decor that had looks of spunk and spirit that let the energy flow….until he was told that his decor was breaking a corporate rule. Having incorporated milk cans into the decor as wastebaskets, he was told that milk cans are not allowed.

It is a truly comical exchange with the bureaucrat whose job it was to enforce the rules. And it taught him an invaluable lesson about life in corporate America. Rather than getting rid of the milk cans or fighting the rule, both ideas he thought were his only options, a wise woman suggested he borrow antique milk cans from Hallmarks art museum, placing them “on display” …..and use them as wastebaskets.

My negotiations teacher from Columbia would have called the outcome, ‘an elegant solution.’

Yes, one approach could have been to launched a blog entitled “Milk Cans Rule”, a website called “Hallmark’s Corporate Rules Suck”, a petition could have been signed, meetings could have been scheduled, leaders lobbied, a vote taken, and maybe, maybe the Milk Can Rule would be repealed. Cost would have been significant in terms of time and energy.

Or, Option B: Craft a solution where everyone gets almost all of what they wanted in the first place without all the fanfare.

Elegant solutions are the corporate equivalent of art in motion. It takes practice and patience. We can learn it at any stage of our life. And best yet, it applies to our work, and to our life.

Try it. Be congruent and authentic instead of fierce, kind and compassionate instead argumentative. Curious and creative, instead of closed and inflexible.

Let’s leave the body parts sniffing to our four-legged friends, and use our creative minds to make elegant solutions in the form of adaption and compromise.

Advice complete, file in the nearest milk can!