When the answer you need isn’t lying there right on the surface (and it rarely is), Dig Deeper! The insight you require often isn’t visible to the naked eye.

Today’s challenges are increasingly complex. And so is the available information you can seek and apply in confronting them. Where does one start?

Defining the problem clearly is a very good place to start. Which is better to ask:

 Are my sales decreasing because the economy isn’t good? or….

 How can I make my service offerings more appealing in the current economic environment?

The first question leads to a fatalistic answer that there’s really nothing I can do except understand and accept the current situation. The second accepts the facts, but challenges the status quo in search of a better outcome.

To dig deeper is to be willing to uncover and examine harsh truths. The big reveal may be that circumstances changed and I didn’t, or that my attempt to adapt was the wrong one, approached in the wrong way. There is always a lesson to be learned, if you have the stomach for it. When analyzing a painful problem, achieving a certain level of detachment can help; of course this is easier said than done when you’re emotionally and financially invested in the outcome.

It’s far easier to say that this situation isn’t fair, wasn’t of my creation, and shouldn’t be my problem. But what if it is anyway? Do you dig deeper and uncover it or allow it to bury you?

I tend to think about it this way: Will this present challenge be talked about, written about and worried about in 50 years? Or even in 5? (Rarely is that the case.) How will I feel about my response in the same measure of time?

To dig deeper is to seek a root cause and to deal with the problem at that level. To do otherwise will likely allow the pain to endure, along with the circumstances that caused it in the first place.

Tempus Maximize!