To effectively solve problems, you must first understand the question being asked and why it’s important to your stakeholder. Without clarity on why your stakeholder cares, the recommendation you generate might be useless.

The first step for generating a clear and compelling recommendation using a structured thought process is defining the question. All too often when stakeholders ask for a recommendation, we rush off to conduct an analysis and bring back an idea as quickly as possible. That approach can cause massive problems because we never stop to get clarity on what the real issue is.

Teams often assume everyone knows what the question is and therefore don’t take the time to document the issue. Even if they do document the issue, they don’t go the extra step of explaining why it’s important to the stakeholder to solve the issue. Without clarity and agreement on the “what” and the “why” of the issue, the likelihood of generating a recommendation that will meet the stakeholder’s needs is low.

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