Decision making

The other day I had the joy of teaching a class on decision making to a group of nearly 60 future and developing leaders with our partner organization here.

One of the steps that we talk about in making decisions is determining a clear statement of what 'problem' needs a decision. Without understanding the problem it will be hard to make a good decision.

I was reminded of a quote that I have no idea where it came from, but still strikes me as significant when it comes to making decisions and to leadership in general. It goes like this:

"There is nothing as useless as the right answer to the wrong problem."

One of the examples I use in this vein is something like 'It is like me giving you a math problem like 2+(blank)= 10. Do you agree or not? Is that the right answer? Without out knowing what value goes into the blank there is no way for you to know if the answer is in fact 10 or not. We must know and understand what problem we are trying to solve before we can ever know if we have the right answer or not.'

I think many times in our lives we think we are giving the right answer, when in fact that may be true, but unfortunately we are answering the wrong question or problem.