One Layer Deeper

By: Liz Lazar, Co-Founder & Principal

Lately, I've been wondering if we're losing the ability to think deeply. Not because we're less intelligent, but because we're busy. Really busy. Every day we're asked to make dozens, sometimes hundreds, of decisions. Our phones buzz. Our inboxes fill up. AI can generate an answer before we've even finished framing the question. Everything around us is designed to help us move faster.

And it does.

But I've started to wonder what we're leaving behind in the process.

Something I've noticed in my work is that the first answer is almost never the one we keep. A nonprofit leader tells me they need more grants. An hour later, we're talking about program priorities. Someone says their board isn't engaged. By the end of the conversation, we've realized no one ever defined what engagement was supposed to look like. Someone wants a strategic plan. What they really need is to make one decision they've been avoiding for two years.

None of those first answers were wrong. They just weren't finished.

I've caught myself doing the same thing in my own life. I answer the question that's easiest to answer instead of asking whether it's the right question in the first place. I think we've become conditioned to identify the first issue we see and immediately jump to solving it. We don't spend much time asking whether we've actually found the problem.

Maybe that's what strategy really is.  Not having better answers, but having enough patience to ask one more question.  Then another, and another, until you stop solving the problem that first walked through the door and start understanding the one that's actually been there all along.

Maybe that's where our best thinking lives. One layer deeper.