Three more questions | Seth’s Blog

Pronouncements are more common than ever.

It might be an insurgent announcing a way to change the government, a CEO with a bold new plan or an entrepreneur seeking funds. Or perhaps it’s a pundit or a critic, hard at work. Pronouncements are bold, definitive and dramatic, but they also seem to defy common sense.

If you’re actually proposing something thoughtful and practical, perhaps you could answer three questions:

1. And then what happens? After we take this action, after you shut down that agency, eliminate that division or launch this new project, what will happen after that?
2. How will that work? What are the mechanics involved, the ones that don’t suspend the laws of physics or organizational behavior that will support this new way forward?
3. Why? Can you explain, beyond your reality-suspending confidence, why the system will respond to your approach?

It’s entirely possible that this is precisely the change we need and the change that will work. But when the pronouncer refuses to answer the questions, it should give the rest of us pause.