A few weeks ago my 4-year old grandson, Luke, picked up my point-and-shoot digital camera and decided he wanted to shoot some photos. I wasn’t there when it happened. No one needs to tell him (nor, I suspect, many others of his age) how to use buttons on electronic devices. It’s simply intuitive for them. I discovered the photos quite by accident. The next time I used the camera I asked Luke’s mom if someone had been using it. She acknowledged that Luke had been playing with the camera, but with cost-free digital photo technology, saw no harm in it. She hadn’t seen Luke’s photos.

But I had—and I liked them. I was struck by how I was suddenly seeing things that I had seen a thousand times and yet it was as though I was seeing them for the first time. All the photos had been shot within the confines of the small upper living space in our home: the bedroom, office and bathroom. I looked at the photos and wondered if it were my task, would my own work be as unexpected and revealing?

We look all the time. The problem is we don’t often see. That’s because we see not with our eyes, but with our mind. It’s more than just noticing. It’s understanding, which only comes when we think about what we’ve observed.

The history of invention is filled with examples of those who observed, thought about it and then acted. Velcro was invented by guy who started thinking about why burrs were sticking to his socks after a walk through the field. You can train yourself to be more observant. To see, look and analyze. Once you’re in the habit, you won’t see any other way.

Sometimes you may need someone from the outside, instead of the traditional position of an organization looking inward. Many times our working process reveals things that are staring you in the face. It’s what British branding and design guru Paul Bennett in a TED talk, refers to as “The Blinding Glimpse of the Bleeding Obvious.”

Even if it’s obvious, organizations often only envision what they’ve already seen. Henry Ford said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.”  Steve Jobs said, “A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”

Just this week modern8 spent all morning at the offices of our new client walking around and seeing what the company was all about. We looked for things that revealed their true culture. Not the company mission statement, but instead what had employees attached to their computers. What was tacked to the walls of the cubicle? Who were their heroes? What was written on the whiteboards and the windows? We shot photos, we took notes, we asked questions.

We’ll use that information to solve our client’s communication problem. You can use the same techniques of truly seeing—as though it was your first time—thinking, and then doing, to tackle your own unique problems.