Diagnosing Business Trouble - Clear and Open

Diagnosing Business Trouble

So, what’s your business trouble?

  • Not enough sales
  • Cash flow is tight
  • My people won’t listen
  • I don’t have enough time

This is what people say, but none of them are actually problems, and that’s why they don’t change.

Huh? They’re not problems?

These are symptoms, and to put it bluntly:

You’ve been so brainwashed you don’t know the difference between a diagnosis and a symptom.

You can only alleviate symptoms–make them less bad. But when you understand the real problem, you can actually solve it. Forever.

But that comes with a price: the discomfort of facing reality.

The reason the whole world is obsessed with treating symptoms is because it’s easy and comfortable. You have a headache and you take a pill. That’s easier than attending to your posture fifty times a day, changing your diet, and/or getting more exercise.

The miracles of western medicine come with a price. We don’t know how to identify and solve real problems. Here are examples of real business problems from my own practice.

The patient presented with symptoms of not enough profit and cash flow.

The real cause of the business trouble was the leader’s fear of holding people accountable enabled employees’ mediocrity, causing overwhelm in herself and allowed for financial mismanagement by a well-intentioned but incompetent CFO. She also kept on a sales manager who wasn’t performing for a year past when he should have been fired.

The solution? Increase accountability using the Accountability Path and face the discomfort of doing so, establish standards for excellence in the culture, and see who rises. Replace those who don’t.

The patient presented with symptoms of saying, “I don’t have enough time.”

The diagnosis was the leader was chronically disorganized, had 100,000 emails in his inbox, and clutter everywhere in his life. He used busyness as a drug to not feel difficult emotions, and took on more than was feasible, creating a constant flow of chaos to ensure the drug never ran out.

The solution? Learn organizational skills using Clear Workspace, Open Mind, and face the anxiety that space and stillness cause, so as to heal the reason the busyness drug was needed in the first place.

Business Trouble: Fix Root Causes, Don’t Treat Symptoms

Symptom treatment is great–for the short-term. I’m so glad morphine exists for people who need to get through a few hours or days to real healing. It’s like a line of credit. Build a life around morphine, though? That’s like carrying credit card debt for years. And look how many do.

In the Clear and Open Community, we get underneath the symptoms and address the root causes of business trouble. If you haven’t solved any problem for longer than a year, there’s a good chance you don’t have an accurate diagnosis. Do you want one?

Are you willing to pay the price? No, not money.

I can provide you with a diagnosis at no cost. I’m offering this to a limited number of people, for a limited time. Contact me to apply. I’ll just ask you a few questions via email. You’ll discover the uncomfortable truth, because I’m not a drug dealer, and I know you don’t want to be a user.