I’ve often said that life is a mirror; and the longer I lead and build, the more I see how true that really is. Everything I encounter in business seems to echo back something deeper about the work we’re doing and the choices we’re making.
Today was a good example. I heard about marketing stress. I heard about hiring issues. There were questions around overall strategy and even a few comments about training and development.
At first glance, it might seem like four separate challenges. As I thought more deeply, I realized they were all reflecting the same underlying truth: uncertainty.
You see, we’re in the middle of narrowing our niche: focusing more specifically on who we serve and how. That means figuring out how to market to that audience instead of trying to speak to everyone. It means asking who we should hire to drive that focused growth. It means clarifying which niche deserves the most attention. And it means identifying the skills we need inside the business to make that transition smoother.
Once I understood that, everything felt clearer. Trying to solve each of those “problems” individually would have been exhausting and far less effective. But when I saw them as reflections of a single root cause, the path forward became obvious.
That’s the thing about mirrors: they don’t always reflect back what we expect. The reflection isn’t always detail for detail, obvious at first glance. It takes assessment. It takes thought.
When we pause and look deeper, we often find that the challenges we face are pointing us toward a bigger truth. And once we see that truth clearly, solving the cause becomes a whole lot easier than chasing every symptom.
Enjoy the reflection.