The simpler you make reality, the more you learn about the people supposedly committed to dealing with it.

Imagine for a moment that you are moving into a new home. Layout is different from the old place, so you have to figure out if all your furniture will fit — and how. Some of it's quite heavy, and you're paying the moving crew by the hour.

So you say you're committed to planning ahead.

Same with the trade show business. Lots of products to show, limited amount of space in which to show a strategically selected few of them. Then, what goes where before you start paying the crews to hoist it around on expensive crains.

For one of my bigger projects, a 4,500 square foot booth space in Düsseldorf, Germany, I drew up a scale layout of the space on roll of paper that spread out to about half the size of one of our conference room tables.

I then made "paper doll" cutouts at the same scale for each of the dozen or so pieces of large equipment our company might want to show.

Only so much was ever gonna fit.

Next, called a meeting of all the various interests: Service technicians, marketing, engineering — and the two or three senior executives we all knew were really the final decision makers, despite all the "team" posters hanging around in our division headquarters.

"We've got to make a decision," demanded the highest paid among us.

It almost fooled you into thinking that was what he and his Number Two were really after.

Dutifully, the the more hand's on participants slid around this paper doll and that on the fixed space of our booth layout. That made it painfully clear to everyone in the room that only a fraction of the wish list would fit.

"That can't be true!" demanded Number Two.

In support of his argument, he launched into expansive discussion of how important this exhibition was to the future of our business. The global economy. The unique technology that only we had to offer, but that could only be understood by being seen in action. "Only a trade show can do that," he said, standing, chest filling with air.

The more he spoke, the more tempting it became to forget that he was saying nothing. The facts on the table weren't going to change, so his solution was to ignore them in continued insistence that things go another way.

More fascinating to me was what he did with his hands as he spoke. I watched them each time they dusted past the table.

Imperceptivity, but nonetheless effectively, he inched the layout sheet away from himself as he spoke. Little by little, pushing its painful reality away.

Thus he could remain smart and authoritative and in the room with us — burning time, but contributing nothing.

Committing to nothing.

You'd be surprised how many challenges have paper doll approaches to sorting them out.

And it's when folks are confronted with these clear realities (ones defying manipulation) that you separate those truly interested in solutions from those who are only really interested after the control they can maintain by resisting certainty.