Responsiveness vs. reactivity.

What do you do when you encounter something new, something hard?  In our world, we are bound to run into things we don't know how to unpack or process or deal with.  None of our current tools seem to work.  The easiest thing to do is to react: get busy and attack the problem with tools and strategies that, although familiar, clearly aren't suited to solve the issue at hand.

Even though you know a fork isn't the right utensil for eating soup, rather than pause and search for a spoon, you try to compensate by working harder.  You scoop up tiny forkfuls of soup as fast as you can so everyone can see you're working as hard as you can to empty the bowl. 

But you aren't doing your best - you're just wasting a lot of time and energy in a very unproductive way.  

Stop.  Reflect on the situation for a moment.  Ask for help.  Ask for advice. Search the web for "best utensil to eat soup".  Take a few minutes and go find a spoon.  Buy one if you have to.

It takes discipline and confidence to stop reacting, to take a moment in order to determine the most effective way to respond to a pressing issue.  You need a good answer for the boss if she sees you sitting around thinking while that expensive soup is getting cold.  She needs to explain to her boss why nobody's doing anything about this problem.  Tell her the soup will get cold by the time you're done trying to eat it with a fork, anyway.  And if you don't take the time to get the spoon this time, then next time, you won't have the right utensil to do a better job emptying the soup bowl, either.  If you can convince the bows to let you invest the time into finding a better solution to the problem this time, you'll save everyone a ton of time, money, and frustration down the road. 

Respond, don't react.

"What does eating soup with a fork have to do with cybersecurity?", you ask.  Everything.