“Can we take a step back here?”

A colleague once brought in this gem of a book, 100 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings, poking fun at business speak and meeting habits. They're spot on for the most part, but this one has always irked me:

Now, I don't know about you, but I have seen countless situations where that question was sorely missing from the conversation. We have a bias to jumping right into actions, solutions, and activities when it wouldn't hurt to first articulate the desired outcome:

• Job postings going out and candidates being interviewed without anyone articulating what the desired outcome of the hire would be

• Splashy business initiatives fizzling out because it was never articulated what they were supposed to achieve.

• The dreaded reorg to "shake things up"

• Great technological undertakings (migrations, rewrites) wasting time and not moving any business-relevant needle

Don't just do something; stand there
For a great breakdown of the right way to plan a project versus the typical way, here is David Allen, author of Getting Things Done, giving a TED Talk about Natural versus Unnatural Planning

Ideally, of course, you’d ask that question right at the beginning, and not after much time has already been wasted.