A recent Wall Street Journal article suggested "outsourcing" one's New Year's resolutions. I found the title overly proactive since it evoked a mental image of call center staff in a remote location engaging in diets and exercise routines on behalf of "clients" popping bonbons, but the actual "outsourcing" was far more sensible. Essentially, the article encouraged exchanging resolutions with a loved one, with one party providing one to three resolutions for the other, then holding them accountable to meeting those resolutions.

This assumes a trusting and sound relationship and the fortitude to listen to resolutions that might seem mean-spirited or insulting (who wants a loved one telling them they need to "enhance" their level of fitness?). However, the benefit is having a trusted party to hold you accountable. Most resolutions are readily abandoned, since they are aired to no one but us, and our only taskmaster lies inside our skull.

I have always found that an external force keeps me more accountable than self-reliance. Whether it's a client deadline or personal commitment to a friend or loved one, most people seem more diligent in accomplishing goals subject to external forces. While I'm not sure if I am ready to have an external party set my goals for the New Year, sharing them widely and asking for some "accountability assistance" certainly seems like a good way to accomplish my resolutions, rather than abandoning them a few weeks into 2012.

Management guru Peter Drucker wrote that "Wherever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision." In addition to courage, I would add timeliness, based on having seen a number of businesses delay a decision endlessly, only to become paralyzed by inaction while competitors, customers, and external circumstance pass them by.

It's easier than ever to delay a decision. We have reams of data that can be further analyzed, collated, sliced and diced, and used as a crutch for inaction while also having increasingly active and aware stakeholders ranging from shareholders to government bodies and even activist customers. Inaction can seem like the safest course when stakes are high, but not making a decision limits options, and essentially determines a course of action that puts you in the passenger seat.

You will never have the best or most extensive information, and rarely will a business decision have an obvious right or wrong alternative; however, as Mr. Drucker so aptly mentioned, rarely does a business become successful by avoiding a decision.

I had a speaking engagement in Thessaloniki, Greece in early December, and my wife and I decided to make a bit of a vacation out of the trip. We planned a few days in Greece, and while pondering the globe and considering where we could spend a few additional days, our focus was drawn to Turkey's capital city of Istanbul. Neither of us knew a great deal about the country aside from the rudiments acquired in grade school, but it always held an exotic appeal and the one hour flight from Thessaloniki was also attractive.

 While I usually bristle at the idea of an organized tour, my wife suggested a food tour she'd found online that promised a circuitous route through traditional neighborhoods, and a sampling of 20+ different dishes with a focus on local "street food" rather than haute cuisine.

The day started with a walk through a market where we procured fresh cheese, olives, and bread, which we then ate in a warehouse of sorts off the main street of the market. We then progressed through various side streets and alleys, sampling everything from candy and baklava to liver and a drink made from fermented millet seed. Each dish had a story, whether it was the baker who had been making a particular dish for decades, just as his father's father had done, or the soup in the basement of a mosque that had been feeding hungry local workers for a thousand years. The spices and style of cooking augmented the sense of Istanbul as a melting pot of sorts, with Greek, Roman, and Ottoman influences blending and building upon each other.

I've always felt one could establish a connection to a culture or city by sampling its food, and Istanbul was no exception, particularly since this tour allowed our group of four to experience people and places that would be otherwise inaccessible to a non-Turkish speaking foreigner without extensive local knowledge. While it will cost me some extra time at the gym, the day of walking, eating, and experiencing Istanbul in this manner was an unforgettable experience.