I closed last year's The Conceptual Leader with a note inspired by the British writer and intellectual G.K. Chesterton, and his beautifully simple and action-oriented answer to "what's wrong with the world":
I am.
I look at it as both a matter of being humble as well as pragmatic with a call for action: control the things you can control, in the best spirit of the Bible verse:
…do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own” – Matthews 6:34
(As a side note: I hope you get that I don't think you have to be a Christian to conceive the power of that message. In fact, I would imagine that other religious scriptures would have similar learnings. I am just referring to the one that I know more about.)
Chesterton went on and wrote an entire book on the subject of that question, going much deeper on his thinking beyond the powerful summary of the short answer. And one of his additional conclusions is that…
What's wrong with the world is that we don't ask what is right.
Now, and to start to connect and converge to the intended subject of this issue, often the real challenge with that (as also properly identified by Chesterton himself) is that we can't quite agree on what does 'right' mean. Particularly when it comes to defining the ideal, where we want to end. Although quite often we might agree on the diagnosis and the observations of what is currently broken, not working, or wrong.
And it is because of that realization, that Chesterton, with the context of the matter of his book being social problems, suggests that we should first focus on defining what is ideal, the end state of what we want to get to, then only could we be capable of proposing solutions.
At this point I recognize you might be slightly puzzled as to what I am getting to… And you would be in your rights to do so, as so far is at most a tangent theme to what I typically focus on here.
The thing is that it was largely by meditating on Chesterton's writing that I finally could spot and fully grasp what I now believe to be a general common pattern that has quite some broad implications:
Whenever there is a chance that different people can look at something and define different ends or goals to it, despite the possible existence of agreement on the (current) problem, or the diagnosis, we need to start at the end… (and work backwards).
Here are just some examples of where that might have an impact (for the better, if you manage to get convergence and shared understanding):
How you look at your personal and professional development and advancement;
How you approach product or project plans and execution;
How you assess and judge your interpersonal relationships and engagement;
Once you start reframing and doing things right in line with this sort of principle, many possible sources of conflict and misalignment may sort themselves out. For as long as there is a common understanding on that ideal, end or goal, of course.
And it also clears the path to experimentation, to accepting and dealing with uncertainties and complexity, all of sudden opening up in front of you. With any need for slight or bigger redirection informed by that end which is an agreed and shared knowledge - for as long as it remains applicable and what we are targeting, as they obviously can (be reagreed to) change.
By the way, it is as important to rethink and reconsider whether the ends or goals currently being pursued should be changed. Otherwise that might become a source of frustration, or simply for getting something completely wrong to start with - which obviously doesn't happen to us, only for that other guy, right!? ;-)
At the end, it is always that bit of dance between setting the proper end or goal, trying things out, continuing with what is working, leaving the rest; iterating and reassessing regularly whether that direction set remains where we intend or not to go. Depending on the context, the end or goal may/should or may/should not change that often.
For instance, in a dynamic complex business world we live in, that should lead us to think and set ends and goals in a more granular and not so much forward looking fashion, unless we are OK in risking constantly having to re-do things. May be very different for some personal goals that could by and large be fairly stable.
And here I will conclude by bringing the two pieces of Chesterton's learnings coherently together, with a reframing to the work piece of the world:
What is wrong in work is that often we don't ask enough what does doing 'right' mean, in the given context. With that we bias discussion too much to being stuck on the myriad of possible solutions (or how the end should look like) to the problems (which we often agree on) we have at hand. But it is really up to me, in the context of what I can control or at least influence, to put it right, to take that burden and the action needed to bring clarity and put everyone on the same page where it matters most - the end or the goal of what we are trying to achieve.
by Rodrigo Sperb, feel free to connect (I only refuse invites from people clearly with an agenda to ‘coldly’ sell something to me), happy to engage and interact
As I was reading this, before you wondered whether your audience might be confused, I felt I was on a strategy discussion, but the purpose being what is the end we want to achieve and then work backwards to achieving it. Assuming I followed correctly, it feels like you implied sometimes we don't do that, but instead start at the beginning and work our way to the end.