I get to make important decisions at work. (Surely owe a debt of gratitude to my organization for that.) And you may know this, getting to make decisions is only half the work. The other half lies in thinking through the situation at hand and validating the solution that’s on the cards.
More often than not, it’s not me who comes up with the solutions. My team does. (And boy, do I have a fantastic team?) I think great leadership lies in the ability to enable its people. And as I seriously work towards that, life gets in the way and we get stuck or stumble. It’s a major thumb-suck!
To stay out of the rut, I use the “so what” strategy. Each time my team or I get stuck, we simply ask “so what?” As weird as it may sound, this simple question has rescued us from taking costly decisions. On a few occasions, we even decided to drop the matter completely!
Think about it! Just plain discard it because it simply isn’t worth the time investment.
Asking questions can be a powerful exercise to clarify your thinking. For me “so what” does it. For you it may be something else. Whatever the case is, “the quality of your life is determined by the quality of your questions.” (I think Tony Robbins.)
What’s your question? And most importantly, “so what?”