To do our best, we have to be able to see what’s true and to act accordingly. It has nothing to do with being positive or negative, but rather being able to see before acting.

For example (from Jim Collins’ book Good to Great) when customers wanted something different in our supermarkets, Kroger looked at the data and made a strategic decision to slowly change every single store across the country to be a new kind of store.

IGA had access to the same data, but they didn’t budge. They may have hoped that things would go back to the way they were, that customers would someday want what they offered again.

Research that led to the book found that the best businesses take a critical, structured look at the data before them.

What are you not able to see clearly now? And how might you restructure your thoughts to see and then act?

I know that I tend to point an overly rosy picture. “Oh it’s fine, that’s okay, things will work out.” At some point we have to believe things will work out to take action that might fail, but I can see at least intellectually that this is a separate issue from being able to discern the data before me.