What solutions are hiding in plain sight?

I had an embarrassing incident in the shower of a hotel room recently and not what some of you may be thinking. I couldn’t figure out how to turn it on. Having tried everything I could think of, I gave up and phoned reception only to be told the tap was right in front of me. Which it turned out it was. Comfortingly the receptionist later told me that I was not the only person to have asked this question and they had considered whether they needed to put a  notice on the shower to draw people’s attention to it.

Which of course got me thinking. How often in this brave new work world, where the leadership challenges seem bigger than ever are the solutions actually hiding in plain sight? Sometimes I think business gets a bit like the story of the Emperor’s new clothes – we assume because the context we’re operating in is complex, the answers must be complex too. Which is where I think we inadvertently trip ourselves up. Because sometimes the solution is right in front of us, just waiting to be seen.

What work question have you been wrestling with recently that is equivalent to ‘Where’s the tap?’ Perhaps by asking someone more or less familiar with the situation than you, the answer may be less complicated than you think.

#personalleadership #growyourgreatness