A few days before school started, my son wanted a donut. He's a 10th grader, he's been biking around our neighborhood all summer, and he knows where the donut shop is. So I suggested he bike there himself, and bring one home for his sister. He's on the brink of learning to drive, and biking gives him a chance to practice some of the same things he'll need soon: planning a route, navigating, keeping track of time and dealing with whatever happens along the way.
Donuts are excellent motivation. He made it to the donut shop. Then he got a flat tire and he called me. There was an easy solution: I could get in the car, pick him up and throw the bike in the back. But he didn't really need me to solve the problem for him. He needed some information he didn't have yet.
I reminded him that there were two bike shops nearby. He looked them up, checked their hours, figured out which one was open and decided he could walk his bike there.
He did. The shop fixed the tire, and he rode home with the donuts. Next time, we'll add another option to his repertoire: I'll teach him how to fix a flat himself.
I've been thinking about that little adventure because of something it reminded me about my work.
Being capable isn't the same as having traveled this particular road before.
Why It Matters
The leaders and organizations I work with are already good at what they do. They understand their organizations, their communities and their work far better than I ever will. They have expertise, experience and relationships that I don't have. But sometimes the terrain changes.
A new initiative crosses departments that haven't worked together this way before. A group that started informally suddenly needs a way to make decisions. New funding creates possibilities—and responsibilities—that didn't exist before. A strategic plan reaches the point where someone has to figure out how to turn it into action.
The organization knows where it wants to go. What isn't always obvious is the route from here to there. That's often where I come in.
I bring a different set of experiences and questions. I can listen across an organization, see connections between pieces of work, help make decisions and responsibilities visible, and create structure where the old way of working no longer quite fits.
But I'm not the expert on the client's organization. They are. The best work happens when we bring those different forms of expertise together.
Sometimes I know a route the client hasn't traveled before. Sometimes the client sees something I couldn't possibly see from the outside. And sometimes we encounter the organizational equivalent of a flat tire and have to figure out a new route together. That's less like handing someone a set of instructions and more like navigating alongside them.
Try This
Think about a project that feels stuck or unusually difficult right now. Instead of asking, "Why can't we figure this out?" try asking:
"Is this actually a problem we have navigated before?"
If it isn't, the answer may not be to work harder at the old way of doing things. You may need a different perspective, a new structure, or someone who has traveled enough similar roads to help you see another route.
Between Meetings
My son's next bike lesson will be how to fix a flat. Not because he failed by going to the bike shop. He solved the problem perfectly well with the knowledge and resources he had. But now he has one more experience to build on. Next time, he'll have more choices.
I think good consulting should work that way, too. Solving the immediate problem matters, but the work is even more valuable when the organization comes away with another process it knows how to use, another question it knows to ask, or another kind of challenge it knows how to navigate.
So here's the question I'm carrying this month: What does your organization know how to navigate now that it didn't know how to navigate a year ago?
