Most people are taught to solve problems quickly.

Very few are taught how to understand them first.

I wrote The Power of SO after years of watching people attack symptoms, rush toward assumptions, and confidently solve the wrong problems.

The book isn’t about slowing down for the sake of slowing down. It’s about learning how to notice what matters before reacting to what’s loudest.

Every chapter in The Power of SO started somewhere real.

A conversation. A failed assumption. A frustrating meeting. A conflict with a coworker, a manager, or an executive. A moment where someone — sometimes me — solved the wrong problem because the wrong questions were being asked.

But there were good moments too.

The mentors who gave life-changing guidance at exactly the right time. The team members confident enough to tell me my latest idea may have been pulled from a very specific body cavity. The people who challenged assumptions without fear. The moments where clarity suddenly appeared because someone finally paused long enough to understand what they were actually trying to solve.

Over time, those moments became rules I managed by. Ideas scribbled onto office whiteboards. Lessons repeated in meetings. Principles people asked me to send in emails so they could keep them.

Eventually, someone asked:

“Kev, why haven’t you written a book?”

So, about thirteen years later, I did.

The book was already working long before it existed.

Every so often, someone I worked with years ago reaches out.

“Kev, do you remember the lesson about blueberries?”

“I still plant my tomatoes that way.”

“‘What are you trying to solve?’ I used that during an argument with my husband. We realized we weren’t even upset about the same thing.”

Those moments mean more to me than sales numbers ever will.

One executive I respected deeply once told me:

“You see through the mud like it’s not even there.”

If I knew then what I know now, I probably would have replied:

“Yeah. You should read my book. It’ll be out in twenty years.”