If you’re afraid it’s gonna get graphic, breathe deeply – you have my word I’ll keep this clean.
But a recent dalliance with my 7-year old daughter, her tummy woes, and a practitioner of Integrative Medicine [Nope – not a weird joke] has provided me with a refreshed insight on what making work actually work looks like.
I talked recently in this video about how years of chasing down every western medical specialist we could find left us frustrated and hopeless. Because, in hindsight, they were asking the wrong questions on our behalf. They were looking for the problem, the breakdown, the illness. And blissfully for us – she had nothing acutely wrong or broken. And their conclusion, in turn, was that she was fine.
But she wasn’t fine. She was uncomfortable much of the time. And that didn’t seem good enough.
So we connected instead with an Integrative Medicine practice. And they took a different approach. Rather than asking what was wrong or broken, their question was: Is she as well, as optimal, as she can be? And the answer to that question was no. Because there are nearly always opportunities to improve – even when nothing is broken.
They made recommendations, which we’ve implemented, and days later we’re already seeing results.
The point here is not to offer a criticism of western medicine, because finding the breaks and offering the diagnoses of acute problems is essential. And in business, we need to do this as well. If something breaks down, finding the repair should be priority 1 for any leader.
However, just because there isn’t a visible break doesn’t mean all is as well as it could be. And as leaders, we need to find and spend more time asking those questions. Instead of “where are the problems” let’s ask ourselves, our teams “where are there opportunities for more?”
In my Leaders’ Guide to SuperCandor, I offer a series of questions we can all use to shift our perspective, to pose the questions that will get us from fine to amazing, breaking out of the “if it ain’t broke, there’s nothing to fix” mentality.