Do you have the perfect fix for the wrong problem? There's a diagnosis!

In an emergency session around a conference table, ten of us gathered to develop solutions for our hemorrhaging software sales.  We needed to turn things around fast. Hunched over tons of customer success data, trouble tickets, sales insights, and competitive curves, we were confident we could stop the bleeding...

We’ve all been there–whether we’re in technology, fintech, agtech, manufacturing, healthcare, or any other growth industry…we can’t put our fingers on exactly what’s wrong, so we dig in with full force, believing if we just start somewhere, our problems will be solved.

The truth is, that isn’t how it works. As you’ll see from the end of this story, it’s better to take a pulse check first before you start fixing things. Take a breath, and ask yourself 15 questions to help clarify what’s holding you back.

In our case, we immediately started dissecting issues with the product in an emergency session to stop plummeting sales without truly understanding where we were stuck. 

“Teams seem to love our product, but their bosses, not so much. I wonder what’s up with that?” That was what the COO shared at the end of our first day of troubleshooting. They’d looked more carefully at the customer insights and had a big insight.

What did the bosses care about that was preventing them from approving bigger purchase orders? Security.

The actual place we were stuck: how to reconfigure our software security to meet a higher standard of enterprise security requirements.

Looking back on team huddles over the past ten years, it’s clear that we’d been missing a diagnostic to help pinpoint where to begin:

• A large manufacturing company focused on operational efficiency when the problem was actually sleepy products.

• A global mobility company working on biometrics when they were missing the boat on ecosystem innovation.

• A startup inside an accelerator endlessly pivoting in the pilot stage when they really needed to find corporate partners for the partnership will include economic sovereignty, “We’re focused on accelerating the pace of change, not simply on building a handful of unicorns.”

Sometimes we stay stuck because we’re comfortable. Sometimes we know we’ve hit a wall but don’t know where else to turn.

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Try this…

When you’re caught in a loop of frustration, your project is stalled, or you can’t get the support you need for an important initiative, try this:

• Remember that fixing the wrong thing wastes time and tests patience. Take a pulse check of your team before you launch into solutions

• Don’t always tackle the “stuck” response the same way. If you’re stuck at the beginning of the ideation process, you have to approach it differently than if you have a stalled pilot.
  

We’ve got a new diagnostic tool for you to discover where you’re stuck.

Take the Diagnostic Now