Just the other day, I had a rather impassioned conversation with a colleague about my approach to solving a problem for a client. At some point in the conversation, I realized something about him and me, simultaneously. The thing I realized about him, was that he pays great attention to detail and noticed things about me that never really considered. What he noticed was my propensity for consistency. What that really means is that he tuned into the fact that I sometimes leaned to my habits and they often manifest themselves as a constraint on my creativity. The approach I was taking for this particular business challenge favored an approach I had taken in a previous situation for another client. My initial reaction was to pause and look at the evidence before me. After a few seconds of deep contemplation, I discovered he was absolutely correct! For me, a problem must be observed, decomposed, analyzed and attacked. If it sounds like a “standard procedure”, that's because it is a standard procedure. For folks with science backgrounds, we tend to look for analogs to approach problems. In fact, if you were to hang around me for any length of time, I might be heard uttering things like “scientific method” or “design patterns”. While these are staples in the realm where the Laws of Physics reign supreme, they may not apply equally as well to the Laws of Business. Lesson learned! So, I had quite literally dragged along my experiences from previous experiences into a current experience and was quite content at doing so. While the business challenges may appear similar and the solution set may include some of the identical logic applied in previous cases, the look and feel of the result can be customized for the client. When a tendency comes over you to simply replicate a solution to apply to solutions for multiple clients, that is a sign that the drag-ons have overtaken your ability/desire to treat each business challenge as a unique opportunity to do something new, exciting and impactful. In short, clear your closet of the drag-ons and do something special.
