Yesterday I was following up the progress of a project with a Client. The project has been initiated by them some eight months ago but as of yesterday it still hadn’t got off the starting blocks.

The initial flurry of activity, the project scope, the thought processes, the resource allocation and presentations, we’d done them all, but the Directors had the project on hold- sound familiar?

There are of course a multitude of reasons as to why a project is put on hold and when in doubt…don’t do it! so I don’t have any really issue with the Directors decision but on my drive back last night it did set me thinking.

If you have a problem facing you, what would it be like if it was solved or on the way to being solved? What would that be like for you?

It brought me to the Cartesian Questions formulated by the French Philosopher René Descartes; I apologise in advance if you’ve heard them before.

Here are the four questions.

Take your time to really consider all of your answers before moving on to the next question.

Ask them in the order presented and after asking each one, ask “and what else?” You need to drill down to get to the underlying belief and reasoning.

• What will happen if you do ‘X’
• What won’t happen if you do ‘X’
• What will happen if you don’t do ‘X’
• What won’t happen if you don’t do ‘X’

This isn’t an ephemeral diversion into 16th Century philosophy but a very real question for today.

What is stopping you making that change and if you did change, as I asked earlier, what would that be like for you?