Thinking upstream
How a visit to my physiotherapist taught me that pain is rarely where you experience it.
Football is a young man’s game. By the time you reach 30 you’re considered to be on your last legs. The dutch midfielder, Clarence Seedorf — widely regarded as one the best midfielders of his generation — played at the highest level until he was 38.
But when he joined AC Milan when he was 26 years old, Seedorf was plagued with chronic groin pain.
A normal approach to his complaints would’ve been to address the area of the pain. But Jean-Pierre Meersseman, a Belgian chiropractor, didn’t think like everyone else.
Meersseman decided to pull out Seedorf’s wisdom tooth instead.
Seedorf went on to play over 400 games for Milan, never experiencing a recurrence of the groin pain.
About a week after my son was born I noticed a pain in my big toe (don’t worry, this isn’t one of those stories).
After ignoring it for a month I finally paid a visit to my GP (a generalist), who suggested I see a physiotherapist (a specialist).
My physio, TJ, is great. She took the time to ask a series of clarifying questions, including some that seemed innocuous and others that were irrelevant. But she’s the specialist, so I played along.
After she was satisfied that she had all the background she needed, she proceeded to do what physiotherapists do: pull, push, prod and bend all the bits of me that were already sore before I got there.
“How about that, does that hurt?”, she asks as she contorts my knee in a direction that doesn’t look safe.
“Yes”, I reply.
“And is that your pain, or a new pain?”
And there it was. The most crucial question of all.
“Is that your pain?”, something TJ asks a dozen times each session. Every pull of a limb, or turn of a muscle is backed up with this question. Everything is done with the sole aim of isolating the root cause of my specific pain.
You can see where I’m going with this.
In physiology the pain is rarely where you experience it.
"When Seedorf came to see me he had continuous groin pain which had been bugging him for a year and a half," Meersseman says. "He couldn't practise properly and was on a downward spiral. I remember the first day he was at Milan I had his wisdom teeth pulled out. The pain in his groin went away immediately and that helped rebuild his career."
It may seem like a bizarre anecdote, yet serves to highlight the key principle; addressing a pain at the source may work for a time but eventually you need to go upstream to find the real cause.
It isn’t easy, and sometimes the solution may be tough to swallow.
For many Asset Managers the pain is felt downstream; in their websites. Most engagements begin with someone in a Marketing team feeling the pain of an outdated or poorly designed website. And just as often, the urge is to apply a new lick of paint. After all, it’ll make the pain go away. Right?
Wrong.
Re-designing a website without first understanding the real source of the pain would be like TJ telling me to wear different shoes. Sure, the shoes might make the pain go away at first. But eventually I’d need to fix the root cause.
So what is the root cause of a “bad” website, and is it always the same?
You need to ask questions that feel irrelevant and difficult
No. In fact it’s often different for every Asset Manager. But what is the same is the process to diagnose the pain. Like Meersseman, or TJ, you need to go back to the basics. You need to ask questions that feel irrelevant and difficult, like questions around brand positioning, audience types, tone of voice or message penetration. Perhaps the reason a website isn’t working is because your story isn’t cutting through, or maybe you aren’t speaking the same language as your audience, or maybe you aren’t positioned correctly.
“Is that your pain?”
My pain is less complex that Clarence Seedorf’s, and fortunately I get to keep all my teeth. TJ has spent a few hours identifying and addressing the cause of my pain, as well as working on the local area in my foot where it manifests.
Turns out, I have some very unpleasant tightness all down my right side, particularly in my lower back.
But her real advice?