Happy Diwali, rainmakers. Yesterday marked the peak of the festival of lights, with the latitude of its celebrations spilling into today. I’m not making this a festival explainer; I simply want to honour the spirit of the day: light over darkness.
For me, “light” isn’t a metaphor for cleverness. It’s the discipline of seeing. As you know by now, my vision is a world where people earn freedom through honest trade. My mission is to unleash entrepreneurial spirit with an unbreakable mindset, proven marketing, and avant‑garde tech. This year’s Diwali reminded me that the concept of light may have a lot to do with how much we choose to observe.
The problem we’ve trained into ourselves
As a culture we reward thinking more than looking. We hire for answers, promote for opinions, and celebrate fast-talkers. The result? Brilliant people sprint off the blocks powered by deduction, doctrine, and dashboards, and miss what’s literally in front of them.
I’ve been training a new recruit at Blacfox, a junior strategist who works closely with me. He’s brilliant; genuinely someone I expect to become a monster in this industry. Coaching him has surfaced a pattern I see everywhere: we default to acting from what’s in our head instead of seeing what’s in the world. And observation, like any muscle, atrophies when it isn’t used intentionally.
Light as optics
Observation is the cleanest form of “light.” It’s optics, not ego; phenomena, not philosophy. It’s also the shortest path to leverage because observation, done right, naturally reveals root causes. When you can see the root, the solution tends to “pop into view,” cheap and fast.
There’s a classic teaching device called the Washington Monument story. I unpack it in my book Age of Agency, Rise with AI, but the gist is simple: when you follow observable symptoms back, step by step, you often find a surprisingly small upstream change that resolves a cascade of downstream problems. Root‑cause analysis is simply structured observation.
The Observation Ladder
Here’s the framework I’ve been drilling with my team. It’s ruthlessly simple on purpose.
Step 1: Just the facts (no additives).
To get into the habit of doing this, describe only what is observable. If you’re a doctor: “There’s a person. Two eyes. Nose. Mouth.” If you’re reviewing a campaign: “This was an outbound tele‑sales campaign. 1,200 dials placed. One script. Two agents. Call window 9 a.m.–5 p.m.” No opinions. No adjectives. No explanations.
Step 2: List the symptoms.
Symptoms are observations of non‑optimum states. “Three meetings booked from 1,200 dials.” “Average call duration: 27 seconds.” “Contact rate: 4%.” Treat these as bullet points, not arguments.
Observation: nose.
Symptom: runny nose.
Step 3: Read the symptom list in concert.
Don’t solve one symptom at a time (“solution‑by‑symptom” is expensive and brittle). Sit with the whole list and ask: What common thread could plausibly create all or most of these symptoms?
Step 4: Name the root cause.
Distinguish the root cause from associated problems. There may be several contributing factors, but one will be primary. Circle that.
Step 5: Minimum viable fix.
Good root‑cause work makes the solution obvious and small: a single upstream change that collapses multiple symptoms. The quality of a solution is the impact per unit of time and money. Aim for maximum effect, minimum spend.
Step 6: Measure and log.
Ship the fix, instrument the metric that matters, and write a 10‑line log: context → symptoms → root-cause → change → result. This turns one team’s eyesight into the company’s institutional memory.
Time ratio rule: Spend 80–90% of your effort on Steps 1–4 (seeing). If you get the root right, Step 5 is usually trivial.
A mini case (how we teach it)
Consider this safe, contained assignment: “Figure out why this campaign under‑performed.”
Facts: 1,200 outbound calls, one generic script, 2 agents, 9–5, goal = meetings.
Symptoms: 0.25% meetings booked; high hang‑ups in first 10 seconds; most connects during 12–1; no lift on day 3 after script tweak; agent B outperforms A 3× on connects but not on meetings.
Read in concert: Low early‑call stickiness + lunch‑hour connects + no lift from copy changes + performance parity on meetings suggests a top‑of‑funnel targeting and timing issue, not a persuasion issue.
Root cause (hypothesis): We’re calling a segment whose reachable window doesn’t overlap with our calling window, and the script’s first 8 seconds signal “sales” to switchboard filters.
Minimum fix: Shift 35% of dials to 7:30–9:00 a.m. and 5:30–7:00 p.m. local, front‑load a curiosity‑based opener for gatekeeper traversal, and suppress numbers that show “spam likely.”
Measure: Contact rate, ≥10‑second hold, meeting set rate per time band, per‑agent deltas. Usually, the lift from timing and opener hygiene alone beats any “better pitch.”
Common traps to avoid
Solution‑by‑symptom. Fixing each bullet independently creates busywork and cost.
Experience over eyesight. Your last playbook was true for then. Treat your treasured work experience as a guide, not a governor.
Tool worship. Dashboards summarise; they don’t see. Start with raw signals (calls, transcripts, screenshots, calendars), then abstract.
Premature synthesis. If your Step‑1 notes include adjectives or causality (“bad list,” “low intent”), you’re thinking, not seeing.
A 15‑minute weekly drill for teams
Pick a micro‑outcome: one email, one call block, one landing page, one SDR day.
Three minutes: write only facts.
Three minutes: write symptoms (bullets, no arguments).
Five minutes: read them together; propose one root cause.
Two minutes: define the smallest upstream change to test.
Next day: measure one metric; log the learning.
Run this cadence, and you’ll feel the “observation muscle” strengthen in weeks.
This is important
My vision is a world where people earn freedom through their own honest trade. My calling is to unlock entrepreneurial capacity with mindset, proven marketing, and revolutionary tech that makes the impossible possible. None of that works if we live only in our heads. Sight keeps our strategies situation‑specific and our technology pointed at reality, not wishful thinking.
This Diwali week, I’m choosing “light” to mean eyes open. Turn down the noise of cleverness. Reward the teammate who sees what’s actually there. Spend your energy naming the root, not polishing the pitch. Do that, and the solutions will, almost embarrassingly, reveal themselves.
Make it rAIn, KG
P.S. If you want the deeper breakdown of the Washington Monument tool for root‑cause thinking, I walk through it in my book, Age of Agency, Rise with AI.