We Keep Reaching for the Wrong Tool
I’ll say something that might be obvious but that most of us conveniently forget when things get hard: most business problems aren’t systems problems. They’re human problems.
The difficult team member we keep managing around instead of talking to. The vision that feels blurry because we’ve never actually sat down to articulate it. The recurring revenue problem that’s really a sales conversation we keep avoiding. The burnout that looks like a productivity issue but is actually an alignment issue.
We reach for systems. We build processes. We open ChatGPT and generate a 40-page strategic framework. And the human problem just sits there, patiently waiting.
The Engineer Who Finally Got It
My guest Wayne Herring is a civil engineer turned business coach — and if that sounds familiar, it’s because it’s also basically my biography. We met at the Unconference wearing matching flannels, discovered we both grew up in Pennsylvania, both lived in or loved Colorado, both studied civil engineering, and both ended up coaching people for a living. Statistically improbable. Personally delightful.
Wayne runs Business Builder Camp and hosts an annual gathering called Rendezvous — two days, nine round tables of five business owners each, one small lake in Pennsylvania, and a leather-bound journal. No giant binder of content. No curriculum to push through. Just the right people, a container built on trust, and enough nature and quiet to interrupt the patterns that keep them stuck.
What Actually Happens When You Get Out of Your Own Way
Here’s what Wayne said that I keep coming back to: we don’t have big epiphanies. We have small next steps.
And I think that’s actually the most honest thing anyone has said about retreats, masterminds, or any kind of group experience. We’re sold on the breakthrough moment — the one insight that changes everything. But what actually moves people forward is smaller and stickier than that. It’s the crucial conversation they finally admit they’ve been avoiding. The simple hire that would free up ten hours a week. The request they haven’t made because they’ve been trying to shoulder everything alone.
Those things don’t require a breakthrough. They just require another human who is actually listening.
The Pattern Interrupt
Wayne made another point I love: change of environment changes everything. When you pull someone out of their normal context — especially into nature — something shifts. The brain quiets the loops it’s been running on. You stop processing the same problem the same way and start actually seeing it.
He’s right that there’s science behind this (shoutout to Dartmouth’s outdoor experiential learning research). But you don’t need the science to know it’s true. You’ve felt it. The walk where you finally figured something out. The trip where you got clarity you couldn’t manufacture at your desk. The conversation that only happened because you were somewhere different.
That’s the pattern interrupt. And it works every time.
Be the Human
Here’s where Wayne and I landed, and it’s the same place I always land: you can have all the systems, all the AI tools, all the frameworks in the world — and none of it replaces actually getting present to the people around you.
Your team. Your clients. Yourself.
Wayne draws stick figures. Labels them with people’s names. Asks: what are they doing right now? What do they need? What are you hoping for them?
It’s almost embarrassingly simple. And it’s almost always where the real answer lives.
🎧 Listen to the full conversation with Wayne Herring on No More Mondays → careerbenders.com/episode-267
