One of the questions I’ve started asking myself more than any other over the past few months is surprisingly simple: What outcome am I trying to create?
It isn’t a complicated question, yet I’ve found it has the power to change almost every decision I make. Whether I’m responding to an email, having a difficult conversation, making a business decision, or simply deciding what to say next, that one question has a way of slowing me down just long enough to replace reaction with intention.
The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve realized that most poor decisions aren’t made because people have poor intentions. I think they’re made because we often decide before we think. We react to what’s directly in front of us instead of considering where we actually want to end up. As I’ve observed people over the years, I’ve become convinced that most decisions are made through one of four filters: emotion, habit, convenience, or impulse.
Sometimes we make decisions based on emotion. Someone frustrates us, hurts our feelings, or challenges our ideas, and our emotions take the driver’s seat. Sometimes it’s habit. We’ve always done something a certain way, so we continue doing it without ever asking whether it’s still producing the results we want. Other times it’s convenience. We choose the quickest path, the easiest answer, or the option that requires the least amount of effort, even when we know there’s a better decision available. And sometimes it’s simply impulse. We act first and think later, believing we’ll figure it out along the way.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with any of those filters. They’re part of being human. Every one of us has made decisions for all four of those reasons, and we always will. The problem is that none of them begins with the future we’re trying to create.
That’s why I’ve been trying to use a fifth filter: outcome.
Before making an important decision, I ask myself, “What outcome am I trying to create?” That single question has become one of the most valuable leadership tools I’ve ever discovered. If my goal is to strengthen a relationship, does what I’m about to say move us closer together or farther apart? If my goal is to build trust, does this decision strengthen that trust or slowly chip away at it? If my goal is to help a client succeed, is this truly the best recommendation for them, or simply the easiest one for me? And if my goal is to build a great company, does this decision reinforce the culture I’m trying to create or quietly work against it?
The answer isn’t always easy, but the question almost always brings clarity.
I’ve also realized that we already understand this principle in many parts of our lives. At InnoVision, we never begin a marketing campaign by asking what the commercial should look like or what headline we should write. We begin by asking what outcome we’re trying to create. Who are we trying to reach? What behavior are we trying to influence? What action do we want someone to take? Only after the outcome is clear do we begin building the strategy. One day it struck me that if we naturally think this way when building brands, why wouldn’t we think this way when building our own lives?
That realization changed my perspective. Instead of allowing the moment to dictate my response, I began allowing the desired outcome to guide it. I’ve found that this way of thinking is especially valuable during difficult conversations. It’s easy to react when someone criticizes your work, questions your judgment, or says something you don’t agree with. But if your goal is to preserve the relationship, earn trust, solve the problem, or move something forward, then your response needs to support that outcome.
Being right isn’t always the objective. Sometimes creating the right outcome is far more important.
That’s a distinction I wish I had understood much earlier in life. The older I get, the more convinced I become that our lives are shaped less by a handful of extraordinary decisions and more by the thousands of ordinary ones we make along the way. Most happen so automatically that we barely notice them. But imagine the cumulative impact if just a small percentage of those decisions became more intentional.
Imagine if, before sending an email, responding in frustration, making an assumption, or saying something we couldn’t take back, we paused for five seconds. Not to overthink everything. Not to become paralyzed by every little decision. Just long enough to ask ourselves a better question: What outcome am I trying to create?
I’ve come to believe that one question has the power to improve almost every area of our lives. It can make us better leaders because we stop reacting and start thinking. It can make us better communicators because we become more intentional with our words. It can strengthen our relationships because we begin valuing the long-term outcome more than the short-term emotion. And it can even improve our personal discipline because our daily choices become connected to the future we actually want instead of whatever we happen to be feeling today.
Perhaps that’s why I’ve stopped thinking of success as a destination. I think success is much closer to the accumulated outcome of thousands of thoughtful decisions made over time. Every decision is a vote for the future we’re creating, and the question is whether we’re casting that vote intentionally.
Life has handed me many valuable lessons, but this one continues to shape almost every day I live. Before you make your next important decision, pause for just a moment and ask yourself one simple question: What outcome am I trying to create?
You may discover that the quality of your decisions has less to do with having better answers and much more to do with asking better questions.
