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What If Your Biggest Opportunity Is Already Working?

Most leaders have a finely tuned radar for problems.

Revenue softens. A key employee struggles. Margins shrink. A customer goes quiet. A competitor makes noise. Put a leadership team in a room, and the agenda fills with fires to put out.

That is not a flaw. Companies grow by confronting hard things, and problems earn their place on the list.

But there is a quieter risk in always asking what is wrong. You stop seeing what is right.

I was reminded of this recently watching Verne Harnish discuss Appreciative Inquiry, an approach that asks leaders to identify what is working and build from there, rather than treating the business as a list of deficiencies to correct.

The Founder Trap

Most founders are problem-solvers by instinct. Many built their companies because they spotted something broken that everyone else walked past. That instinct is the engine of the business.

Over time, though, a strength left unchecked becomes a blind spot. When every conversation circles a problem, you start to see the company through a deficit lens. Leadership meetings become issue lists. Planning becomes gap analysis. A win gets a nod before the room moves on to the next thing that hurts.

I call the result success blindness. You grow so focused at fixing what is broken that you stop noticing the strengths that built your business in the first place. The irony is sharp. The very instinct that made you successful can quietly keep you from understanding why.

The Questions We Rarely Ask

Look at the questions that run most leadership discussions:

What is not working? What needs fixing? Where are we behind? What could go wrong?

Each one matters. But notice what they share. Every question points at a gap.

Now try a different set:

What are we doing better than anyone expects? Which customers value us most, and why? What sets us apart, again and again? Who on this team raises everyone around them? Which recent win do we not actually understand yet?

Those questions point at strengths. And the answers often surface opportunities that were sitting in plain view the whole time.

Growth Leaves Clues

Every healthy company has bright spots. One product quietly beats its forecast every quarter. One customer segment carries higher margins and deeper loyalty. One manager builds a team that hums. One unglamorous process produces better results than anything else under the roof.

These are not luck. They are clues.

Yet most companies spend far more time dissecting failures than studying their wins. A coach reviewing game film studies the mistakes, of course. But the great ones also break down the plays that worked, because a win you understand is a win you can run again. A win you cannot explain is a win you cannot repeat.

A Different Conversation

At your next leadership meeting, run a short experiment.

Ask each person one question: What is one thing we do exceptionally well that we should do more often?

Then stop talking and listen.

Not to celebrate for its own sake. Not to wave away real problems. But to find the strengths worth amplifying, the ones no one has named because they have always just worked. Naming a strength is the first step to scaling it.

Here’s My Take

A recurring theme in my newsletters is that everything connects.

Growth rarely arrives as a single breakthrough. More often it comes from recognizing a pattern others overlook, then pulling on it deliberately.

Appreciative Inquiry is, at its core, a discipline for seeing those patterns. Most founders are experts at finding what is broken. The best are equally skilled at finding what is strong.

Fixing what is broken keeps you in the game. Amplifying what already works is how you pull ahead. So before you spend another week consumed by your challenges, stop and ask one question:

What is working here that deserves more attention?

The answer may be your next opportunity.

Recommended Viewing: Verne Harnish recently shared a short YouTube video on Appreciative Inquiry and why leaders should spend more time identifying and amplifying their strengths. It is a worthwhile reminder for any founder and leadership team.