A couple of months ago, one of our client teams found themselves facing a difficult decision. They realized that two functions they’d always kept separate really belonged under one leader. Keeping them separate created unnecessary complexity, causing extensive debates about overlapping resources, workflow and priorities. Combining them would eliminate confusion, increase speed and quality, and make the company more responsive to its customers.

Solving issues is hard work. Straight forward, but hard.

Are you getting 100% of what you want from your business? The key to that – for any owner, any team, any company – is your ability to confront and make the difficult decisions we all face.

To paraphrase philosopher and logician Kurt Gödel, you can’t be in a system while at the same time understanding the system you’re in. In other words, you need to raise your head from time to time and see the system for what it is, whether it’s good or bad. We are normally so buried in the day-to-day scramble that we never take the time to do this. Yet, you’ll see something new every time you do.

"Standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous; you get knocked down by the traffic from both sides.” - Margaret Thatcher