Have you put your glasses on?

Today I was spending some time with our two year old singing and dancing to The Wiggles (don’t laugh, if you’ve got kids you know you’ve done it too!!). Anyway, I was listening to one of the new Wiggles songs with the lines ‘I can see clearly now…..that I’ve got my glasses on’ and it got me thinking……
Sometimes we get so caught up in what we are doing and who we are working with that we don’t stop to take a breath and reassess. It may be that in reality the approach we have taken or plan that we have put together is actually not going to hit the mark, make that sale, or engage our audience. As much as we think we’ve got it covered, know exactly what we are going to do and have filled in most of the detail around how we are going to get there; there are times when you need someone removed from the entire situation to ask the questions. These individuals may know very little about your organisation, or the product you are trying to market. But if you can’t clearly and succinctly articulate what it is that you are trying to achieve within a few sentences, then you too probably need to take a step back and put your glasses on.
For me, I needed someone outside of our team and my peers who I usually bounce ideas around with to ask these questions. I thought it would take a few hours to do this, but surprisingly it only took a few of the right questions and about half an hour of my time.
But that half an hour of time was invaluable as the answer to what we were trying to achieve was actually already there. I just needed someone to make me put my glasses on and look at the situation a little differently. I can literally say that ‘I can see clearly now’ (yes, I’m even quoting The Wiggles) and I have the clarity and focus to achieve the desired outcome.
For me, the answer to what we were trying to achieve was actually already there, I just needed someone else to take me back to basics and get some clarity around what it was I was actually trying to achieve.
We are all constantly faced with these types of situations, and most of the time the solution in simple and already staring us in the face. We just need to remember to take the time to ask the right questions so that we are not investing time and energy into something that isn’t going to achieve the desired outcome.
So the next time you are dancing around the house in your Big Red Car, maybe you too should put your glasses on so that you can see things a little clearer!