When Kristen Cox was at college she was losing her sight. The professionals trying to help her focused on how she could make the most of her remaining vision. Their solution to her problem, as they understood it, involved her hauling a cart around campus, piled high with large-print books.

That approach didn't work.

"It would take me an hour just to read one page in a book with a magnifying glass, with eye fatigue," she recalls, in my Expert Interview podcast. "Actually, at one point, I started thinking I was stupid, like, 'What's wrong with me? I can't keep up in class'."

Then Cox had a revelation – she could get the information she wanted in other ways. She didn't have to see it... she could feel it or hear it instead. The problem wasn't her lack of vision. It was people's attitude toward it. Mindset made all the difference.

"When that changed for me, it really opened up my life," she says.

Are You "Decorating the Fish" Instead of Fixing the Problem?

This insight has impacted her distinguished career as a top public official, and it's one of the many useful lessons in her book, "Stop Decorating The Fish: Which Solutions to Ignore and Which Problems Really Matter," co-written with the entrepreneur and economist, Yishai Ashlag.

In this clip from our Expert Interview podcast, Kristen Cox explains what "Decorating the Fish" really means.

What Are the Seductive Seven Solutions?

Like the townsfolk in the book, and Cox's helpers in college, many of us assume our problems are caused by a lack of something.

We might think we need more technology, for example, more data, a new strategy, or more training and communication. Perhaps a reorganization would do the trick, or do we just need to blame someone for the problem? Or maybe we should throw more money at it, to make it go away.

Cox calls these perceived solutions the "Seductive Seven," because they can be dangerously distracting.

Haunted by Phantom Problems

It reminds me of a job I had at a start-up, years ago. The company failed after a few years, but not before ripping through many of the Seductive Seven.

The company produced multimedia cross-cultural training tools, designed for people living and working abroad. When the initial venture capital ran out, it needed to generate revenue, but no one was buying the product.

The owners upgraded the computers and software, to streamline and accelerate workflow. That didn't boost sales. So they developed a new strategy, which involved switching the...