Make the implicit, explicit
If I distill what might be almost universally useful advice into principles one would be along the lines of 'Make the implicit, explicit'
As a leader, as a coach and now a consultant I tend to look for what might be implicit information which may be contributing to friction people are experiencing.
It can come in many shapes and forms. For instance, any sufficiently experienced person in the Information Technology sphere knows to ask “What problem are we trying to solve?” when a group of people are locked in a debate over solutions.
Often there are situations where maybe the problem is known and there’s still friction around assessing options and selecting a solution to try because the overall goal is not clear.
Sometimes the goal may be clear but other goals which need to also be satisfied are not. For instance, the security requirements or some compliance conditions or other qualitative aspects.
“Who is this for?” is another classic question experienced people ask when it becomes clear there may be multiple audiences in mind or a nebulous, ill-defined audience.
There are so many variations of this that it has become almost always useful to have part of what I am looking for to be evidence of any implicit information that people who are trying to make decisions are operating with. Often the different participants in a decision may have very different assumptions and perspectives over what this information is which influences their perspective on the decision.
Operating on a more similar set of inputs to a decision won’t guarantee a preference for the same solutions but it can reduce the distance between positions and increase the chance for alignment or at the very least, understanding.
Do you have any principles which are close to universally useful for you? What are they? Share your examples in the comments.