The market has changed, the toxic client demands more and there’s not enough hours in the day. You’re down on manpower, you need to keep the peace between staff, there’s a target and deadline to meet, cash position is stretched, you must be at home at a certain time, you must make the right choices, you must maintain the correct appearance…and you have obligations for Christ’s sake. You want a fast solution. But is it what you need?
Well, you've been swiftly doing that successfully for years. Solving problems, deciding, delegating, hiring the experts, clearing the obstacles and you kept everything moving.
So, what the hell happened? Why is now any different than it was before? You’re a capable man. Maybe this is a bit of decision fatigue and you just need some time out or some other ancillary support. Ah but wait, you can’t.
Because your world is dominated by time and cost efficiency. And right now, you don’t have the time for lengthy introspection in months of therapy before you may or may not get the answer you want.
I get it. But let’s take a look at it from a different perspective.
Which is most valuable to you - fast answers or better judgement?
Fast answers are really bloody useful. If the boiler is broken, call somebody who knows boilers. If the contract is wrong, get the lawyer and if the numbers do not work then fix the numbers.
The trouble actually begins when the problem is partly contained in the way you are looking at it. There is a very inconvenient trap here: You can become extremely efficient at solving the problem you have described, without ever noticing that you may have described the wrong problem.
Both the question and the target already contain assumptions and the definition of the problem already tells you where you are allowed to look.
Our guy at the top of the page for example who’s dealing with a toxic client demanding more time when he’s down on effective manpower. He’s stressed about losing the client because cash is low and payroll is due.
So he and his immediate team are working 20-hour days to make up the time, satisfy the client and meet the payroll. But the cost of a fast solution is a depleted chief exec, a depleted workforce and the reinforcement of the client’s toxic behaviour.
His perspective was “I am at the mercy of this client because I need their money for payroll.”
But what if the client’s urgency is leverage rather than just pressure? What if we looked at it in terms of a contract review, reframing the out-of-scope terms, exploring early-settlement incentives or factoring the debt? The vantage points are there.
So maybe you can think harder, work faster and become increasingly sophisticated while remaining inside exactly the same frame.
The seduction of the fast answer
A good answer can settle uncertainty and relieve pressure. It can create movement and actually save time. I’m sure you have lots of cases like this.
But an answer can very quietly tell you what kind of problem you have and once you accept that, you begin solving inside that explanation.
I need to sell the business, my marriage is the problem, I've lost motivation and I need a new target. Each one of those becomes the container and the danger is treating the first plausible explanation as a settled account.
Whether it's a business problem or a personal one, the position you're looking from decides both what the problem is and what it means.
The everyday example
A man snaps at someone after a brutal day. Later he apologises and says, “Sorry, I’ve had a bloody awful day.” Now that event has context and the facts haven’t changed, but the meaning has.
Without that context, you could easily dwell and fall deeper into a dark vortex: What is wrong with me? Why am I like this?
Does that seem familiar in any way?
Perspective does not necessarily change the facts but it can definitely change what the facts may mean.
The first explanation is not always the whole picture. So it’s quite straightforward - judgement gets better when we widen the picture.
The obvious objection
That’s all very well Leo but I haven’t got time to spend months learning to think differently.
I totally agree. Let’s face it, you’re probably dealing with a lot. Could be work, health, family, staff, a business, a board, a thousand emails and a head full of ideas and unfinished decisions.
This is another reason why I won’t subject you to more methods and the latest acronym to abide by.
Better judgement must not feel like more work or more load on a busy mind - it should feel calmer and better balanced.
Getting practical
When you get a job as a new recruit, nobody expects you to understand the place by thinking harder. Someone will walk you through it. They’ll show you who actually makes the decisions, what the unwritten rules are and where the real requirements are. Once you’ve sussed the place, the people and the overall landscape, your own judgement starts working properly.
So, I’m sure we can all agree that being shown can be much easier than being asked to construct our own (mis)understanding.
In much the same way, if your head is already overloaded, asking you to discover a new vantage point based on an essay or some spoken words could just create more work for you (It depends on your personal state of course). Sometimes it is easier for me to show you one first.
You don’t always need to learn a new way of thinking. Sometimes you just need to be shown another place to stand. Let me illustrate:
When I first meet a client by video, he gives me an overview of what is going on. That's the beginning of a proper sitrep and usually two or three things start to stand out.
If I think his current state is making it difficult to get enough distance from them, I may suggest that we meet quite soon afterwards. Sometimes I'll deliberately choose a setting very different from the one he's normally operating in. It might be busy, unfamiliar or simply somewhere quiet. We don't perform an exercise. We just carry on talking about the same things.
Later I might change the setting again and return to exactly the same issue.
Only afterwards do I ask: did the problem look the same from each place?
What often comes out is that the facts remained, but something about the problem changed.
My client was not taught a technique or asked to think harder. We simply moved while doing the work, and the change of position altered what he could see.
So, the facts were the same but the perspective changed what they meant.
A lot of capable men come to me wanting exactly that: identify the problem, fix it, move on. Fair enough. It works brilliantly until the problem is partly in the way you are seeing it. Then a fast answer can just become another borrowed explanation.
Once the client feels the value of the new vantage point, rather than it just being explained, which could be a significant learning burden on an already busy mind, then the client is far more willing to take on exercises and tools that help him create perspective for himself.
The actual sitrep
Our first job is to understand the landscape properly. While we are doing that, I may occasionally suggest that we meet somewhere a little different. That might just mean we go for a walk but it may mean somewhere unfamiliar. The point is not novelty for its own sake but it is a calculated provocation on my part. It's quite amazing how a small, deliberate change of setting can alter what you notice.
The perspective shift happens very quickly inside the sitrep and not as another taxing thing to learn, especially when you suspect that something could be wrong with you.
There are times when I will simply tell you what I think. My experience and judgement are there to be used, but I am not you and I cannot possibly know your entirety. If I become your answer machine, the answers will not be yours and you will become less independent rather than more.
You might leave with a nice explainable solution, but if you find it properly, with me as the intelligence section to your command centre, then you leave with greater self-reliance and better judgement.
I think good help should leave you better able to see and decide for yourself. Don’t you?
The time paradox
For those of you familiar with the burnout of continually satisfying demands, only to arrive at the same nagging feeling after trying the books, training programmes, retreats, time-outs, therapies and all the other ancillary remedies, know this:
The fastest answer can become the longest route if it keeps you solving a convenient but ultimately wrong problem.
So which do you want, the fast answer or better judgement?
Finally
The aim of the work that I do is not to slow you down, nor to distrust expertise or turn every decision into an inquiry - that’s just madness.
Speed and efficiency are vital in many situations, but when you cannot see beyond the current frame you may simply be travelling faster to arrive at the same empty conclusion.
Better judgement sometimes starts by getting out of the position you’ve been stuck looking from.
