One night last week I got home late from a meeting, around 10 p.m., and thought I smelled natural gas outside. The pungent odor of mercaptan, the rotten egg-like additive to natural gas, lingered over our driveway and front yard. I called the gas company.

Within 30 minutes, two service techs showed up at our address. One was clearly in charge, but he let the other one do most of the initial investigation. They literally started sniffing around, and then used a chemical sensor to look some more. The man in charge, without the aid of any equipment, fairly quickly determined the general location of the source, which then was further confirmed and pinpointed by the second technician. The leak was not anywhere near where my novice nose thought it was coming from!!

Apparently the leak wasn't considered critical in any way because they told me that it would be repaired "sometime." Later I learned that the work order prioritized its completion for a couple years from now!!

But, surprise! Early the next morning there were utility locators in our yard leaving their flags and spray paint, and only minutes later the repair crew showed up. The woman in charge and her male colleague made quick work of digging up the area, identifying the loose fitting which caused the leak, making the repair, and refilling the hole.

Here are my takeaways. Sometimes we know something's not right. We can smell it. We can sense it. We have an intuition about. We see direct evidence of it.

But we're not personally equipped to investigate the situation completely, let alone resolve it on our own. We need to be willing to reach out for help, avoiding a serious situation later on, even it might be pretty far out in the future.

We also might not have all the necessary tools directly at our disposal; that fun backhoe and trencher is unfortunately not mine, nor do I own a mercaptan detector!

Our church and organizational life is like this: sometimes we know something's not right, we "smell" something that shouldn't be happening. When this occurs, we often hesitate to seek help. We second guess our "nose" and feel like we should be able to handle these situations on our own.

Help, however, might be just what's required to get the problem sealed up, addressed in a timely way, worked through now rather than in a few years when it might be even worse. And someone with the right tools can bring important resources to the challenge.

As a leadership companion and organizational consultant, this is what I do. I help you diagnose and respond to the challenges you're facing. I'd be glad to share what's in my tool box. It might not always be as simple as tightening a loose connection and wrapping it with tar tape, but there is value in calling on me to help you assess the situation and develop strategies for moving ahead.

What's your nose telling you? Is it time for some help? Drop me a note or give me a call, and we can get to work today!