One Problem, Many Ways to See It
For leaders engaged in professional decision-making, the trap is often speed. There is pressure to act before clarity is achieved. But thinking like a consultant involves resisting that pressure, stepping back, and questioning how the problem is framed. This article examines how adopting a consulting mindset can reveal unexpected leverage points—if we are willing to change how we see.
“Most people ask us for solutions. What they really need is a different way of looking at the problem.”
Tracy Wilkinson, Founder
This line, often repeated by TraceWorthy’s Founder, captures the essence of consultant thinking. The challenge is rarely the one being described. The work begins by shifting perspective.
In the world of consultant thinking, no single lens is sufficient. Business challenges do not arrive in neat categories. They arrive as tensions, contradictions, and competing truths. The consultant’s role is not to impose a framework, but to shift perspectives until the nature of the problem becomes clear.
This article explores six distinct lenses used by TraceWorthy consultants to navigate complexity—each representing a different way of seeing the same problem. These lenses are not mutually exclusive. They offer options for problem reframing that allow us to move beyond surface-level fixes into sustainable change. Each one represents a different way of seeing, a flexible toolset that allows consultant thinking to meet the demands of diverse client challenges:
- Analytical Thinking
- Creative Thinking
- Lateral Thinking
- Systems Thinking
- Risk-Based Thinking
- Empathetic Thinking
Each approach serves a different purpose. Together, they form a flexible and human-centred way of applying consultant thinking to business challenges.
Analytical Thinking: Structuring the Unclear
Analytical thinking becomes vital when surface-level indicators conflict or when instinct alone cannot make sense of data. Through structured thinking, we create space for professional decision-making based on reality, not reaction. This is the consulting mindset at its most disciplined. patterns that would otherwise be missed. Consultant thinking often begins with analytical thinking when a client is overwhelmed by complexity or paralysed by options. When a business is overwhelmed by operational noise, this lens enables consultants to identify signal from distraction. It involves breaking down problems into parts, identifying variables, and examining cause and effect. We often find that what looks like inconsistency is the result of mismatched inputs, not poor strategy. In those moments, structured thinking restores focus. A scalable structure is needed to replace ad-hoc decisions.
One TraceWorthy client, a boutique hotel group in Bali, faced volatile occupancy despite consistent marketing spend. Our team disaggregated data by segment, booking window, and source. The issue was not marketing—it was overexposure to a narrow seasonal demographic. With that insight, the strategy shifted.
Analytical thinking is helpful when:
- Patterns are unclear or misleading.
- Business decisions are based on assumption rather than evidence.
- A scalable structure is needed to replace ad-hoc decisions.
This form of consultant thinking builds clarity from complexity. It is one of the most effective ways of seeing when uncertainty clouds operational judgment. Thinking like a consultant often means looking beneath the noise of symptoms to identify the patterns driving outcomes.
Creative Thinking: Redefining Possibility
Creative thinking challenges the rules of the game. Creative thinking is most valuable when the client believes all viable paths are closed, when a client feels boxed in by compliance, capacity, or capital. It is a different way of looking at constraint—not as a dead end, but as a design brief. Thinking like a consultant here means unlocking strategic value from what others saw as limitation. in constrained environments. When clients believe they have run out of legal, financial, or operational room to manoeuvre, the consultant’s role is to test assumptions that have been taken for granted. Some of the best solutions we have helped design were born from limitations that initially felt like dead ends. Clients are seeking growth but facing regulatory or logistical limits.
In 2023, we worked with a fintech founder seeking to enter a market with strict foreign investment caps. Instead of bending the rules, we helped them create a revenue-sharing structure with embedded compliance protections. The innovation was legal, enforceable, and sustainable.
Creative thinking is valuable when:
- Conventional solutions come with unacceptable trade-offs.
- Clients are seeking growth but facing regulatory or logistical limits.
- A fresh approach is needed to unlock latent value.
Consultant thinking in this mode unlocks options others overlook. It brings new ways of seeing business constraints—not as hard limits, but as signals pointing to smarter pathways. This type of consulting mindset avoids binary choices by introducing creative alternatives grounded in reality.
Lateral Thinking: Breaking Out of the Frame
Lateral thinking is a branch of consultant thinking that is neither analytical nor artistic. It is about challenging the framing of the problem entirely.
This lens is necessary when:
- Efforts to fix the issue have already failed.
- There is inertia caused by entrenched thinking.
- The problem has been ‘solved’ multiple times but still returns.
- The client is asking the wrong question and the team cannot agree on what the real issue is.
- The standard tools have already been applied—with no result.
- Assumptions about the business model have not been questioned in years or have already been applied—with no result.
Lateral thinking enables us to challenge the assumptions embedded in how a problem is presented. It is often this lens that reveals the fault lies not in the options available, but in the framing itself. This approach to problem reframing is central to the consulting mindset—and crucial when conventional logic leads nowhere. essential when conventional logic has failed repeatedly. If a problem seems familiar but keeps returning in new forms, it may have been wrongly categorised from the start. Consultants apply lateral thinking to dislodge the framing of the issue itself—not to be provocative, but to be accurate. There is inertia caused by entrenched thinking.
A long-standing client approached us to resolve performance issues in one of their sales teams. The problem appeared to be training. Instead, we reframed the issue: the team structure rewarded individualism in a culture that prized collaboration. The solution was to redesign incentives and rotate roles, not introduce another skills workshop.
Consultant thinking expands dramatically when we introduce new ways of seeing. Each lens offers a different perspective, and lateral thinking in particular shifts us out of habitual patterns. Thinking like a consultant requires the courage to abandon familiar logic when it no longer serves.
Systems Thinking: Seeing the Connections
Consultant thinking through a systems lens looks for feedback loops, bottlenecks, and invisible tensions between elements of the business. This structured thinking enables more accurate diagnosis and helps realign systems that have drifted apart. A consulting mindset refuses to treat symptoms in isolation. when localised fixes do not hold. It becomes clear when solving one issue creates ripple effects elsewhere, or when departments operate in silos that undermine progress. Consultants use this lens to reveal unseen interdependencies that quietly dictate performance. The organisation is outgrowing its original model.
Effective consultant thinking uses systems awareness to protect against unintended consequences. A flexible consulting mindset allows for mapping ripple effects, revealing the connections clients often overlook. These interdependencies are one of the most overlooked ways of seeing within growing businesses.
One foreign-led franchise in Jakarta faced declining quality at newly opened locations. The instinct was to re-train staff. But the issue was upstream: centralised procurement delays were forcing store managers to improvise, breaking brand consistency.
We turn to the systems thinking lens when:
- The organisation is outgrowing its original model.
- One solution keeps triggering new problems elsewhere.
- Teams blame each other for outcomes that span departments.
- The business is scaling but its structure is not keeping pace.
- Communication breakdowns occur between departments that were once tightly aligned.but its structure is not keeping pace.
Effective consultant thinking uses systems awareness to protect against unintended consequences. A flexible consulting mindset allows for mapping ripple effects, revealing the connections clients often overlook. These interdependencies are one of the most overlooked ways of seeing within growing businesses.
Risk-Based Thinking: Anticipating What Could Go Wrong
Risk-based thinking is not designed to slow progress—it is a form of structured thinking that tests the resilience of a plan. From a consultant perspective, the goal is not to eliminate risk entirely, but to build models that respond well under stress. It reflects a professional decision-making style grounded in long-term outcomes. of foresight. It is most valuable when decisions carry long-term weight, especially under legal or political ambiguity. TraceWorthy consultants use it not only to avoid disaster, but to ensure that resilience is built into the structure from the outset. The environment is politically or legally uncertain.
A foreign investor was preparing to buy into a co-working business. On paper, the structure was clean. But by testing each clause against realistic downside scenarios—tax audit, immigration inspection, founder dispute—we identified vulnerabilities and restructured the deal.
Risk-based thinking comes to the front when:
- Decisions carry long-term obligations.
- The environment is politically or legally uncertain.
- A small mistake could escalate into reputational or financial harm.
- A decision could lock the business into a long-term path.
- Founders are focused on speed and not contingency.
- External changes (regulatory, political, economic) feel likely but undefined.
- Small oversights today could lead to reputational or legal exposure tomorrow.
This is consultant thinking that protects opportunity by anticipating fragility. It introduces one of the most essential ways of seeing—evaluating actions not only by their best-case outcome, but by their survivability under pressure. Thinking like a consultant requires this balance of optimism and realism.
Empathetic Thinking: Understanding the Unspoken
Consultant thinking grounded in empathy allows us to surface these tensions. We pay attention to tone, timing, body language, and silences—what is communicated indirectly. Without this awareness, businesses risk implementing technically flawless strategies that no one is willing to carry forward. central when technically sound strategies fail in practice. A consultant applying this lens listens for what is not said—mistrust, fatigue, pride, fear. It is only through recognising the emotional architecture of a business that sustainable change can take hold. The solution requires buy-in from others.
In late 2022, a social enterprise founder in Bali approached us regarding staff turnover. They suspected wage dissatisfaction. But interviews revealed the real issue: newer employees felt excluded from decision-making. By creating clearer communication channels and recognition pathways, the turnover stabilised.
Empathetic thinking is essential when:
- Strategy feels sound, but outcomes are poor.
- Cultural mismatch is affecting performance.
- The solution requires buy-in from others.
- A technically correct strategy does not gain traction.
- High turnover or disengagement emerges without clear cause.
- Leadership behaviours are unintentionally undermining the outcome.
- The real objections are emotional, but stakeholders frame them as operational.
Without this lens, consultant thinking risks becoming technically sound but socially tone-deaf. Empathy provides one of the most revealing ways of seeing, especially when emotional realities are ignored by logic. This is where the consulting mindset shifts from strategic to truly human-centred.
Consultant Thinking Is Layered Thinking
A consultant’s job is not to be clever. It is to stay curious long enough for the real issue to reveal itself.
This mindset shapes how our team approaches complexity.
Clients do not come to TraceWorthy for validation. As our Founder says,
“Clients do not hire us to confirm their instincts. They bring us in to challenge them—kindly, but thoroughly.”
Tracy Wilkinson, Founder
This balance of rigour and empathy is the foundation of how we think.
Effective consultants rarely use one lens in isolation. Thinking like a consultant means applying different lenses in sequence, or sometimes simultaneously, depending on what emerges. Consultant thinking is defined by the ability to move fluidly between perspectives and apply the right lens to the right problem at the right moment. This layered consultant perspective is what enables progress when single-track thinking has failed.
When TraceWorthy teams approach a challenge, they bring structured insight, creative alternatives, deep cultural understanding, and practical foresight. This is consultant thinking in practice—designed not only to solve the problem, but to support the person carrying it.
What to Do Next
Think about the last big decision you made. Which lens did you use? Which did you ignore? And what might you have seen if you had changed your point of view?
TraceWorthy helps business leaders think beyond the obvious, test their assumptions, and navigate complexity with clarity. Whether you are facing a restructuring, entering a market, or weighing a partnership, the right consultant thinking makes all the difference.
If your business needs new ways of seeing, we are here to help.