Last week I wrote about a water leak at a house I walk by on a daily basis. After two weeks, two calls to the water department, three attempts at knocking on their front door, and knocking on three neighbors doors, the water is still flowing heavily down the hill and down the drain. This house is on a fairly busy corner. Many people walk by at all times of the day. So it raises several questions: do people walk by and not do anything? Do they walk by and not notice? Or, do they attempt to reach the people, like me, to no avail?

All of these situations are problematic and not what you would want in your business. In business, it is important that people are paying attention and notice when things go sideways. They are engaged in the business and care. They do notice and raise the flag to get issues corrected. And when the red flag goes up, there is a mechanism such that it is easy to resolve and the person is recognized for doing the right thing. Do you have a company culture where people are engaged and it is easy to get things done? Or is it hard to resolve situations and people just don’t care? How are you creating the culture you want in your company?

You know those embarrassing moments when the solution is so obvious, but you have somehow overlooked it? I had one of those moments recently. My dog decided it would be entertaining to shred both ends of a bag of potting soil and spread some of the soil around the garage. It was a brand new bag. And with both ends opened, I needed to figure out what to do with it. While it was not a priority, it would annoy me every time I looked at it. There it sat for several weeks, until I looked six or so feet past the bag to a pile of empty tubs. All I had to do was carefully pick up the bag and dump it into the tub. It was an obvious solution. And it had been there the whole time.

Many times the solution to the issue you are working in business is already there. It may be the experience of a person somewhere else in the company, or it may be right there staring you in the face waiting for you to look up. The solution presents itself when you declare the issue and are open to the solution. By doing this, it opens the conversation for the people with the knowledge to come forward. Or it shifts your focus to resolving the issue. How are you making sure you don’t miss the solutions that are right in front of you?

Ever since the port closed in Portland for cargo shipments, the volume of trucks on the road has increased. It makes sense – if the goods aren’t going out on ship, you’d expect the rail and truck volumes to increase. The highways are three lanes each way, sometimes two lanes. The trucks typically travel in the middle lane, in very close proximity to each other. I call it the truck blockade because it is incredibly difficult to get from the right lane to the left lane as the trucks are typically too close together and too many of them to maneuver easily. After a bit of research, it turns out that the reason for this is safety (being in the center lane – more opportunity to maneuver) and fuel efficiency (driving close together – drafting).

It may or may not be obvious why certain actions are being taken based on your background and experience. Within a company, helping people understand why actions are being taken can help keep efficient, forward momentum. At the same time, it is important to understand if there are unintended consequences to the actions being taken that rise to the level of needing to make tweaks to the actions to keep efficient, forward momentum. How are you making sure that you the actions in your company are intentional, efficient and effective?