Before You Push Harder: Four Questions That Reveal Blind Spots

When a treatment fails, a strategy stalls, or sustained personal effort produces little change, our instinct is often to push harder.

Sometimes progress does require greater persistence. Sometimes it requires a different intervention. The difficult part is recognizing when greater effort is being applied to an incomplete understanding.

A clinical research team opens more sites when a trial is recruiting too slowly. A company increases commercial pressure when a product launch disappoints. A leader introduces another engagement initiative when performance and morale decline. A person pushes harder to make a difficult change when hesitation persists.

Each response may appear logical. But every solution rests on an assumption about what is causing the problem. If that assumption is incomplete, intensifying the solution may consume more time, energy, and resources without changing the result.

In his 2026 book Dare to Think Differently, Harvard Business School professor emeritus Gerald Zaltman describes how “what-if” questions can expose possibilities excluded by our original understanding of a problem.

Before intensifying the response, we need to pause and test the assumption behind it. Four questions can reveal the blind spots in our original understanding – and help us decide whether to persist, adapt, or change course.

When Pushing Harder Reinforces the Wrong Explanation

Persistence is one of our most admired qualities. We celebrate the scientist who continues experimenting, the leader who refuses to abandon an important objective, and the individual who keeps moving despite disappointing results.

Often, that persistence is precisely what allows progress to emerge. A sound strategy may need more time. A promising intervention may require consistent execution. A difficult personal change may depend on continuing after the initial motivation has disappeared.

But persistence and escalation are not always the same as progress. When we intensify a solution, we also increase our commitment to the explanation supporting it. If that explanation is incomplete, greater effort may consume more time, energy, and resources without changing the result.

A diagnostic pause becomes especially valuable when repeated effort produces little improvement, evidence behaves differently from what we expected, or the same intervention produces very different results.

From Blind Spot to Better Action: Four Questions to Ask

These questions do not assume that the original approach is wrong. They test whether our understanding of the problem is complete enough to justify pushing harder.

1. What Else Could Be Causing This? Look Beyond the Most Visible Explanation

A clinical trial is recruiting participants far more slowly than expected, so the team opens additional research sites. But the number of sites may not be the main constraint. Eligibility criteria may exclude too many participants, or the visit schedule may be impractical for people managing travel, work, cost, or caregiving responsibilities.

Opening more sites intensifies the original solution without removing those obstacles.

The same pattern appears when a project repeatedly misses deadlines. Adding people may seem logical, but if decisions remain unresolved, responsibilities overlap, or priorities keep changing, a larger team may create more coordination without producing more progress.

The trial may ultimately need more sites, and the project may need more people. The purpose of the question is not to reject the visible explanation, but to ensure that it is not the only one considered. Before adding more, ask what else may be limiting the result.

2. Are We Treating Different Problems as Though They Were the Same? Look Beyond the Shared Label

Two regional product launches are performing below expectations, so leadership classifies both as execution problems and introduces the same corrective plan.

Yet in one region, physicians may remain unconvinced that the treatment offers sufficient value over existing options. In the other, physicians may want to prescribe it, but reimbursement restrictions prevent patients from receiving it. One region needs a stronger scientific argument; the other needs a market-access strategy.

The result looks the same, but the obstacles are different.

Labels such as “underperformance,” “resistance” , and “lack of engagement” make complexity manageable, but they describe what we see rather than explain why it is happening. The same blind spot appears personally when labels such as difficult, unmotivated, or anxious replace curiosity about the person or situation behind them.

Before applying the same solution, ask whether apparently similar problems are truly similar where it matters.

3. Have We Mistaken the Result for the Cause? Look for What May Be Driving Both

A division’s performance has fallen, and its employee survey shows declining morale. Leadership concludes that disengaged employees are producing weaker results and responds with recognition programs, listening sessions, and additional manager training.

But declining morale may not be the original cause. Months of shifting priorities, unresolved decisions, conflicting instructions, and abandoned projects may be producing both poor morale and poor performance.

The question then changes from “How do we motivate people?” to “What is causing capable people to become disengaged?” That question may lead to fewer priorities, clearer decision rights, and more consistent leadership rather than another engagement initiative.

Cause and result can also reinforce each other. Stress disrupts sleep, while persistent sleep deprivation intensifies our response to stress. When two problems repeatedly appear together, ask what may be driving both – and whether each is now reinforcing the other.

4. What Might This Apparent Obstacle Be Protecting? Look for the Function Hidden Inside the Problem

A manufacturer uses two suppliers for a critical component, although one is less expensive and consistently reliable. Consolidating production with that supplier appears more efficient.

But what looks like costly duplication may protect the company from dependence on a single source. If a factory closes, transportation is disrupted, or geopolitical conditions change, the second supplier may allow production to continue. Eliminating the additional cost improves efficiency in stable conditions while increasing vulnerability when conditions change.

The same principle applies personally. An opportunity you have worked toward for years finally arrives, yet you feel hesitation instead of excitement. You may dismiss the discomfort as fear of change. But the opportunity may require more travel, less autonomy, or a life that no longer reflects what matters most to you.

The hesitation may be fear to overcome, or it may contain information worth examining. Before eliminating an obstacle, inefficiency, or uncomfortable response, ask what function it may be serving. The answer may be to overcome it, redesign the situation – or preserve what it is protecting.

Turning a Better Question Into Better Action

These questions are not a checklist for every decision. They are most useful when reality stops fitting our expectations: when greater effort produces little improvement, apparently similar situations respond differently, or evidence contradicts our explanation.

The diagnostic pause does not predetermine the answer. It may confirm that the original approach is sound and greater persistence is needed. It may reveal that the intervention should be adapted. Or it may show that we have been addressing the wrong problem.

Its purpose is not to weaken commitment, but to direct it toward what is actually preventing progress.

Final Thoughts

Effort amplifies direction. When our understanding is sound, it moves us forward. When it is incomplete, pushing harder can take us further away from the result we want.

The wiser question is not always, “How can we do more?” Sometimes it is, “What are we still not seeing?”