Peeling Away The Layers

By nature, I am an analytical person. Growing up, I was that kid in class that was constantly raising his hand, asking more questions and wanting to understand why. I haven’t changed.

Lee Odden of TopRank (a personal favorite blog), wrote a great article this week titled, Why Do So Many Companies Suck at Social Media?

It really got me thinking. It brought back to mind a wonderful metaphor I learned over 10 years ago during Franklin Covey’s Helping Clients Succeed™ Consultative Sales Training program. It goes something like this.

In helping clients, before providing a solution, you need to discover the core of the problem. It’s typically something that is most shielded from view or not yet revealed (the core). As you peeling away each layer (by continually asking, “Why?”), you learn each of the surface issues until ultimately you are led to the deeper truth revealed at the core. The root cause of the problem.

In Lee’s article, Why Do So Many Companies Suck at Social Media?, he identified a number of the issues (layers of the onion):

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