Keep an Eye Out (for the Obvious Thing that No One Sees)

There’s a benefit when you step into a new environment for the first time. Really, you experience it until the newness wears off of a new situation. Most people don’t recognize that feeling as a benefit, so I’m here today to say we should embrace it!

When you’re early in your career or starting out at a new job, you are looking at things through “fresh eyes.”

You’re open minded as you take everything in around you. And you notice things that seem off.
A process is inefficient, or maybe something is being done in a certain way because “it has always been that way.” Or you find yourself down the rabbit hole in the employee handbook because some of the content seems to be talking in circles.

If we ever have a chat over coffee or lunch, you’re likely to hear a story or two related to my discovery of my “gift” related to consulting through asking questions.

My questions were always about things I thought were obvious, so everyone else likely had the same questions — I was just the person who said it out loud in the room or wrote it down in an email.

Sometimes the most obvious answer is the one we overlook, precisely because it’s in plain sight.
– Unknown

My questions were taken very differently by my first two managers. One of them saw my questions as unique observations, while the other one saw them as trouble-making that was simply unnecessary. My first manager, Linda, encouraged me to think through the questions I had after finding redundancy in a bank procedure manual.

She asked me more questions. If we were to fix the procedure, what would the impact be? Would we save time? Reduce errors? Would there be a benefit? She helped me think through the business case, and she encouraged me to write it all down.

She also sponsored my ideas – giving me credit – to see if we could implement some of the improvements. They were improved, and we made a difference!

I’m sharing this story because I believe there’s beauty in observing what’s “off” and in sorting out ways to address the challenges.

This is a basic premise of consulting, and companies would be lucky to have staff who are proactive and working to continuously improve across their organizations instead of just leaving broken things broken until they reach a point of escalation at some point down the road.

So keep your eyes open, and don’t be afraid to speak up. Be part of the solution.