...and then what?

I just finished reading a great article titled “The Most Important Question You Can Ask: Then What?”

In the article, the author writes:

The great art of life is in balancing the short term and the long term, so that one can have enjoyment with integrity – pleasure with purpose. But in most areas of life, we pay strict attention to the immediate consequences of things. We look at the immediate results of a social or economic policy and call it a victory (or a complete failure).

The solution to  ‘short term’ thinking, according to the author, is to ask “…and then what?”.  By asking this simple question, we can force ourselves to look past the immediate and into the longer term. The author writes:

The problem is that so few of us take the effort to do this very simple thing. It’s understandable, we get caught up in the moment, and we don’t particularly enjoy thinking in minute detail each and every moment of our lives. But in the coming era, it will become increasingly important for us to ask these kinds of things, as our interconnectedness makes ideas and new technologies spread faster than ever before.

This very simple step of asking “…and then what?” can make a huge difference to any individual’s or organization’s planning process. By thinking about the step after the step, you’ll be able to open up plans to include much more than just the things needed to get the current project complete.

A perfect example of the lack of asking “…and then what?” can be found with most instances of the phenomenon known as Shadow IT.  Shadow IT usually arises because the IT organization can’t/won’t give a person/group a technology/system that they think they need. This group then goes out and finds something to fill their immediate need without thinking ahead. What will happen when the data in that new system needs to be integrated with other company systems, needs to be backed up or you need to move it to another cloud service provider? These are all very simple scenarios that can be covered if you simply ask “…and then what?”

Are you and your organization asking yourselves “…and then what?” during your planning?