We all know that feeling: We fight and we struggle through our days. And yet however hard we try and however much good we aim to do, something set us back.

This week I was talking to a parent, whose son had failed to be accepted to his preferred place of higher education. The disappointment hid the fact there were other equally good options, that the lad could still go on to secure his qualification and that a broader option could actually bolster his career.

In my previous post, I referred to our family’s recent tragic loss. My father was a phenomenally good person, but not easy to understand. Whilst in mourning, we have listened and tried to internalise a blithering array of stories and compliments about the man. People we do not know have said how he touched them and how he influenced them. At a guess, my father himself was not aware of his full skills. There are lessons for us here to hunt down, even as we come to terms with his soul leaving us.

And so too in business.

• If you are told that your stock is too high and forcing a disastrous cash flow position, this is the time to question exactly what brought you to make so many purchases.
• If sales have slumped off, do the original assumptions for your strategy still hold?
• If the quality and quantities of productions runs have slumped off, is the manager to blame or are the inputs at fault?

And so the list goes on. The point is that at the end of these soul-searching (and potentially painful) processes, you and your organisation will be in a far better position. These secret anomalies should have been removed.

Today, I read a tweet from management guru, Tom Peters. In essence, he said that the secret of innovation is to keep asking the question “why?”. An alternative way to put this is that if we are prepared to accept change, we can convert the seemingly negative in to a wonderful good.