People often don’t perceive a problem until they receive a signal. The sign may come from someone in need, a balance sheet for a company, or perhaps from the exodus of people from an organization. Our response to one of these problems can be quick, but the tendency is to treat the symptom and not the root cause.

It takes time to find out why people make certain choices, or why a company may be losing money or people to a competitor. The real answers are often hidden from view and don’t surface until a situation goes critical.

There is a lot of noise in the modern workplace and hearing the signal may be tougher than you think. If I sense that there may be a problem of some sort, then I watch carefully for patterns of behavior. It’s in these patterns that the truth will emerge.