I Flip It

After enough years and enough environments you start to recognize patterns. You walk into a room and within the first hour you have a working theory about what is broken and why. The experience is real. The pattern recognition is earned. And it can absolutely be the thing that leads you to the wrong answer.

Here is something I have learned to do that has changed how I approach every new challenge.

I flip it.

Before I trust what my experience is telling me - I argue against it. I take everything I think I know about the situation and deliberately ask - what if the opposite is true? What if the thing that looks like the problem is actually the symptom? What if the solution I've used successfully three times before is exactly wrong this time?

Fresh eyes are not just for people who haven't seen it before. Fresh eyes are a discipline. A choice. A deliberate act of intellectual humility that says - my experience informs my thinking but it does not get to conclude it.

I've walked into operations where the obvious answer was staring everyone in the face. And I've learned to be suspicious of obvious answers. Because obvious answers are usually the ones the team already tried before I arrived. If the obvious answer had worked - I wouldn't be there.

The best solutions I've ever been part of didn't come from applying what I already knew. They came from questioning it first.

Staying curious longer than feels necessary. Sitting with the problem before reaching for the solution. Asking the question that feels too simple or too disruptive to say out loud.

Experience tells you what usually works. Curiosity finds what works here. I trust my experience completely. I just never let it be the only voice in the room.