Often you know you’ve learned something once you finally and fully are startled by its simplicity. Typically it’s a blinding flash of insight into what from then on seems perfectly obvious. Why wasn’t it just moments earlier?

What triggered this observation was reading an article in the Speakers magazine about Dick Richards and his book "Is Your Genius at Work?" He asks four questions:  1. What do you consistently attempt to give others?  2. What do others come seeking from you (maybe ask some)?  3. What’s the common denominator in 1 and 2?  4. Can you distill this to two words: _____________ _____________.

Maybe this arrived just as I’d answered these for myself. People come to me for the right way to say things (and ideas) to deal with challenges with people, to get the results they hope for. And I consistently attempt to deliver exactly that – to make people, as I see it, better at managing, more positive, etc. But the key for me was "what do they come to me for?" That’s the marketable product – what they already want, not something that I have to drum up business for, some intangible "leadership model" or set of skills. Those are just the mechanisms once they’ve asked for what they need.

My only quibble: two words might be "People Solutions," but I can’t resist making it "positive people solutions for high performance."

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