Twice in the past week or so, I have sat down with some clients in the Jerusalem area and they have demanded that as their business coach, I immediately create a new sales strategy for them.

It is one of those challenges that I am often faced with as a coach and mentor. And I am always inclined to encourage the customer to do the hard work and present their own ideas. By the way, these are invariably of a high standard, but have often been held back for all sorts of reasons.

One of my clients had a particularly interesting. He threw at me a battery of ideas, most of which lacked substance. As he began to run out of puff, I pointed him towards a  cartoon in my office with a picture of people engaged in a laborious meeting It reads:

“Why don’t we just do the stuff that is going to be massively successful?”

A simple, comical , yet powerful message. Minutes later, he could not stop blurting out ideas of quality.

Is it that straight forward for everyone? Not always, but sometimes the best concepts are developed when the target is made crystal clear.

Here are two examples of what I mean, both taken from clips I have seen this week on Facebook.

A) In an old people’s home in America, a teacher has almost literally woken up a group of dementia patients, by helping them to dance as they used to. In the clip, they automatically respond to his movements, as if it were yesterday. They “high-five” and cha-cha and boogie all over the floor. A most practical therapy, involving minimal cost and stress, bringing much happiness to all, something which any member of staff could have initiated.

B) A football coach was attending a press conference, when a young kid asked him if his team was built primarily around ‘attitude’ or ‘technique’. The man was about to launch into his answer, when he stopped and praised the kid. He said that after all these years, he had rarely been asked such an astute question. He wondered why others could not ask such important questions.

What these anecdotes add up to is that many of us are surrounded by seemingly complex issues, both in the work place (or elsewhere). We search hard for answers, even seeking out the calm words of others. Ironically, we often actually know what to do, but we are not prepared to let ourselves to see and to recognise the solution. We have put our own stumbling blocks in the way.