There is a black and white photo of me that has been famous in my family for better than 40 years. It features a 3-year old me holding a stick with some fishing line attached to the end (weighted down with a metal nut) over a mud puddle at a camp site somewhere in Alaska.

It’s adorable, of course, but a few things probably immediately surface around how effective I might have been “fishing” that day. 

First, the tool I was using appeared to me to be adequate, but was completely unable to actually do the job.

Second, the location was a “body of water” but didn’t contain the resource I was hoping to harvest.

This week it might be worth considering how this relates to your work.

Are the tools you are using actually helping you be effective? Or were they handed to you by someone else and you simply didn’t think to ask if they were, in fact, the best tools for the job.

Are you operating in the best environment? Are there any (figurative) fish where you are fishing? If not, it might be time to leave the camp site and search for more robust bodies of water in which to do your work.

(Want to learn more about how to ensure you are leveraging the right tools in the right places? Let’s jump on a quick call!)