Imagine having a whip-smart, creative summer intern who only fetches coffee while managers solve all the problems. That’s how many organizations employ AI assistants today.
To help you get more from this underutilized resource literally at your fingertips, here are five hacks to elevate your chatbot responses.
1. Ask Me Questions
Chatbots can do much more than provide responses to your queries. At the end of a chatbot prompt, include a sentence like this: “Feel free to ask me questions to clarify this request and ensure your response is not constrained by the way I framed my question.”
This simple invitation transforms a one-way interaction into a collaborative dialogue. Instead of accepting a potentially limited response, you’re opening the door to deeper, more nuanced insights.
2. Play Devil’s Advocate
Chatbots are unfailingly polite and supportive. But sometimes, you need a thought partner to pressure test your thinking or identify potential pitfalls.
Instead of posing a straightforward question, try this approach: Enter your conclusion or plan of action, then invite opposition. Use a prompt like: “Please play ‘devil’s advocate’ in response to what I’ve shared. I’m interested in what I might be missing and what flaws you detect in my reasoning.”
3. What Would (Insert Expert Here) Do?
Chatbots can adopt personas based on their extensive training data about well-known experts. Want to brainstorm with Thomas Edison or get Indra Nooyi’s take on a thorny investment option? Here’s a powerful prompt:
“I’m trying to figure out X. I would like you to coach and advise me as if you were [expert]. Please use what you know about [expert] to inform the questions you ask and the perspectives you share.”
4. Role-Play a Difficult Conversation
Remember those awkward role-play exercises in training workshops? Now you can practice challenging interactions in private. Start by providing the chatbot with relevant information about the person and situation. Include any anticipated challenging behaviors.
You can even explain your goals and have the chatbot ask you questions to help realistically portray the other person. It’s like having a personal communication coach available 24/7.
5. Get the Image You Want
AI image generation can be frustratingly hit-or-miss. While it feels magical to create images with a few words, getting exactly what you want can be challenging.
If you’re unhappy with the initial image, get the chatbot to help you craft a better prompt. Try this approach: “Looking at the image you’ve generated, here are a few things I want to change. Before regenerating an image, I’ll list the changes. Then, I want you to provide a complete prompt that will generate a new, improved image.”
These hacks aren’t about replacing human creativity and decision-making. They’re about amplifying your capabilities, providing new perspectives, and helping you work smarter, not harder.
Organizations develop unique patterns in how they navigate complexity and uncertainty. After five years of assessing how leaders approach challenging situations, we’ve discovered that different organizational cultures rely on markedly different information sources to make decisions – insights that challenge our traditional one-size-fits-all approach to leadership development.
I don’t think anyone would be surprised to learn that a group of leaders in a government auditing function would process information differently than a group of technology company sales leaders. Why then, do we offer both groups the same advice about aligning stakeholders, influencing senior leaders, and managing change?
The SCAN Framework
To help leaders identify hidden influences and unseen barriers in complex environments, we developed the SCAN framework. This tool assesses four critical data sources that inform leadership thinking: Structures (organizational systems and norms), Context (environmental factors), Assumptions (underlying beliefs), and Needs (stakeholder motivations and desires). SCAN scores allow us to visualize how different leaders prioritize these information sources when moving from thinking to action.
Our analysis reveals that functional groups and organizations develop distinct thinking-to-action cultures – consistent patterns in how they process information when setting direction, making decisions, or solving problems under uncertainty.
Three Distinct Thinking-to-Action Cultures
The bar graph compares three different groups of leaders from three different organizations and functions. Bar heights represent percentile scores for each dimension of the SCAN framework. The black dashed line represents the average score for each dimension based on total database responses from groups working in the same functions and organizations (n=1528).
Leading Change
Let’s consider what the SCAN profiles in the above graph suggest about how each group of leaders might design a large-scale change effort and the pitfalls they might encounter during implementation.
Government Audit Managers
These leaders demonstrate a strong focus on existing systems and norms, scoring notably higher than average in the Structures dimension. Their systematic approach brings stability and consistency, but also creates specific challenges in change management. They tend to overlook environmental factors outside their direct control (low Context) and rarely question established systems (low Assumptions).
When leading change initiatives, these leaders excel at working within established frameworks but need to strengthen their ability to:
Connect change efforts to broader strategic objectives
Respond to shifting external factors
Challenge procedures that no longer serve their purpose
Technology Company Sales Leaders
These leaders excel at reading market signals and external trends, with significantly higher Context scores than average. This market sensitivity creates agility but can lead to implementation challenges. Their attention to market dynamics often comes at the expense of understanding internal systems and processes (low Structures), while established organizational beliefs remain largely unexamined (low Assumptions).
Their change initiatives benefit from strong market alignment but require additional focus on:
Analyzing how new priorities interact with existing systems
Building sustainable processes amid market volatility
Balancing quick responses with structural considerations
Software Engineering Leaders
This group stands out for their strategic and innovative mindset, showing exceptionally high scores in both Context and Assumptions. They readily embrace new trends and willingly challenge status quo operations. However, their significantly lower Needs scores suggest that they do not seek inspiration for innovation by attending to the desires and motivations of people.
Their change leadership strengths lie in driving innovation, but success requires:
Balancing innovation with operational stability
Maintaining quality standards while pursuing new ideas
Increasing focus on stakeholder impact and adoption
Implications for influencing, aligning, and deciding
Identifying distinct thinking-to-action patterns help us support rather than overwhelm decision makers when they deal with multiple complex, uncertain, and high-stakes situations. We can start by supplying information that’s easy to digest given a leadership team’s SCAN preferences. Next, we can make information from overlooked sources easier to digest so that leaders don’t run the risk of missing something important.
Understanding your organization’s thinking-to-action culture provides a foundation for more effective leadership development and organizational change. It allows you to leverage your cultural strengths while systematically addressing potential blind spots.
In her 2021 bestseller, Peak Mind, professor of psychology, Amishi Jha recounts an epiphany she had about the powerful ways our worldviews grip and constrain our thinking. Dr. Jha and her family had been attending a birthday celebration for her mother. It was a milestone birthday and her mother’s house was packed with friends and relatives, many of them Indian men and women in their sixties and seventies. Dr. Jha and her sister took charge of serving food and drinks. Here’s how Dr. Jha describes what happened next.
When the time came to serve the cake, I was at a loss – my daughter was nowhere to be found, and my sister was busy cutting and plating the cake while I ran frantically back and forth with two plates, trying to get to all the guests. Finally, I felt a hand on my arm. My husband, Michael, was standing there with our son and my nephew
Can we help you?
Husband, son, and nephew jumped in and efficiently distributed the plates. Everyone enjoyed cake, problem solved.
Later, Dr. Jha reflected on the experience. Why hadn’t she asked her husband for help? Why was her first thought, “where is my daughter?” Shockingly, she realized that she had fallen under the spell of a deeply ingrained worldview: Men don’t serve food in Indian households!
As a woman, a scientist, and a psychology professor, Dr. Jha is acutely aware of the casual, implicit biases that regularly harm women. For example, it’s not unusual for her to receive emails addressed to “Sir.”
After her mother’s birthday party, she wanted to shout, “But I’m not sexist!” The reality, she came to realize is that “…if sexism exists in the world, it exists in my lived experience of the world.”
What Would it Take for you to Change your Mind?
Mental models are internal representations of external reality. They are the stories we tell ourselves to help us make sense of the world. Mental models help us process information, reason, make decisions, and make predictions. The key word in the definition is, “representation.” Alfred Korzybski, a Polish-American philosopher and mathematician pointed out that mental models are representations of reality in the same way that a map is a representation of a territory.
Mental models are useful precisely because they simplify reality. Like maps, mental models leave out a lot of detail. Also, like maps, unless a mental model is updated, new realities can make our rigidly held models less useful.
We can hold maps at arm’s length. It’s much harder to put daylight between ourselves and our mental models. Consequently, we confuse our models with reality, we accept our certainties as truth. What’s worse, because the mental model dictates how we process information, it can change the brain’s ability to notice information that’s not part of the model. Dr. Jha literally didn’t notice her husband, son, and nephew when she scanned her mother’s house looking for someone to help serve cake.
Noticing Stale Assumptions
Developmental psychologist, Robert Kegan writes about the transformational changes people experience throughout their lives. His subject-object theory of development differentiates between our internal assumptions about the way the world works (subject) and aspects of the world we can examine independently (object).
Kegan often asks, “Do you have the idea, or does the idea have you?” If you have the idea, you can examine it objectively. If the idea has you, you are unconsciously gripped by the idea.
Before her epiphany, Dr. Jha was unwittingly gripped by the idea that men don’t serve food in Indian households. After her epiphany, the idea no longer controlled what Dr. Jha could notice and think about her situation. She became cognizant of the relationship between an old story and its impact on her behavior. She can hold the thought lightly and decide how it will inform her worldview going forward.
Jay’s Story
I clearly remember how disoriented I felt after pitching my book to Steve Piersanti, founder of Berrett-Koehler Publishers. He pointed out that most people don’t read non-fiction books, they don’t even buy them. Bestselling non-fiction books are purchased in bulk and handed out during corporate events, conference key-note presentations, or as part of training programs. He didn’t care about my writing chops or my research. He wanted to know if I had a platform and a following. A lot of deeply held assumptions and a few fantasies about being an author lost their hold on me that day.
Lisa’s Story
Like many people, I was drawn into a professional role because it suited my personality and skills. I didn’t plan to work in sales leadership and account management, I discovered a knack for it. As I experienced success, I started thinking of myself as a sales professional. Unconsciously, I adopted a mental model that many of my coaching clients share: What I do is who I am. Since co-founding Unstuck Minds, I’ve given myself permission to reinvent my role. I’ve learned to loosen my grip on how I see myself. I recently pursued an ICF coaching certification. Now I have a portfolio of capabilities to contribute.
Loosening the Grip of Stale Assumptions
Stale assumptions don’t just grip people. Many businesses suffer from calcified assumptions about what customers want. It’s easy to imagine the proclamations below animating strategy meetings at three, once dominant companies:
The experience of scanning the shelves of a physical store is an irreplaceable part of what customers love about Blockbuster.
Quality, consistency, and value make Kodak film the best choice for all photographers and cameras.
Business professionals are obsessed with the Blackberry keyboard.
Noticing and potentially revising a mental model isn’t easy. Unstuck Minds has developed tools and thought exercises to help you pull back the curtain on influential thoughts. Here are two of our favorites:
Brainstorm terrible Ideas
Imagine you work for a retail clothing company that prides itself on personalized customer service. In a meeting someone suggests closing all the stores and selling your apparel through a third-party, online e-commerce site. It would be easy to picture people angrily reacting to the idea because it violates a core assumption about the company’s business model. Now that the assumption is out in the open, you can challenge it or recommit to it. Read our story about using “terrible ideas” to help a client identify assumptions and worldviews.
What blasphemous yet plausible idea would elicit a gasp or an eye roll in your organization?
What does the reaction say about your organization’s assumptions?
Consult future you
When facing decisions that will play out over time, we assume that the person who makes the decision (Present-Me) will think and feel the same way as the person who will live with the decision (Future-Me). It’s easier to recognize the fallacy when we retrospectively evaluate past decisions. When we look back on consequential choices we made in the past, it feels obvious that our current selves, faced with the same decision, might consider different criteria or make a different choice. Here’s a trivial example that might be relatable. It’s the middle of the afternoon and someone has brought a tray of rich, decadent cookies into the breakroom from a meeting that just ended. Present-You knows what it wants. How will ‘10-Minutes-From-Now-You’ feel about the decision to mindlessly devour the cookie?
In a lot of ways, a life gripped by our mental models is a bit like living in a dream-like state. We don’t question the strange logic of our dreams. The first moments of waking up feel disorienting.
If you no longer believe that a jolly bearded resident of the North Pole delivers gifts to deserving children on Christmas, you understand the experience of revising a mental model. And yes, letting go of a cherished mental model might be accompanied by a sense of loss. On the plus side, when you hold thoughts, assumptions, and conclusions lightly, you create space for surprising ideas to present themselves for your consideration.
Jha, Amishi P. Peak Mind: Find Your Focus, Own Your Attention, Invest 12 Minutes a Day. New York: HarperOne, 2021.
My wife and I have been binging past seasons of “The Amazing Race.” We’ve been making mental notes of the exotic race locations for imagined future vacations. We also enjoy passing judgment on the way the two-person teams bark commands at each other while driving to their next clue. From our comfortable seats in the living room, we think, “Why not just relax and take in the breathtaking scenery?” Thankfully, we’ve never had microphones and cameras pointed at us while we discuss where to park at the mall.
I’m always impressed when a leg of the race requires teams to navigate in unfamiliar territory. They must drive under pressure, decipher road signs in languages they don’t understand, and arrive on time to avoid high-stakes consequences. Sometimes, they struggle with a manual transmission car. They’re forbidden from using modern GPS technology, creating stressful, complex, and uncertain conditions.
Lately, I’ve become interested in how our attention works and what it means for our ability to deal with an increasingly complex and uncertain world. When driving under familiar and predictable conditions, like a trip to the mall, we have attentional resources to spare. We can listen to music, sip coffee, and have a mature, collaborative conversation about where to park.
However, driving under hazardous conditions through unfamiliar territory requires us to use our attention differently. We become alert to our environment. Subtle features of the landscape take on greater significance. We may need information from people we don’t typically interact with. It sounds like I’m describing what it feels like to lead in today’s business environment.
We know what it’s like to switch the way we use our attention when driving. Changing conditions have an immediate impact. We’ve learned that misapplying our attention represents a clear and present danger. When organizational leaders get in the driver’s seat, the risks of misapplying their attention are less obvious, but no less perilous. We can’t navigate our organizations and teams through uncertain conditions with our status quo driving habits.
Attention Agility
Attention agility is the capacity to shift one’s focus and perspective quickly and easily in response to the dynamic demands of complex and uncertain conditions.
Developing the skill of attention agility allows you to deliberately and strategically allocate attentional resources to various aspects of a problem or scenario. You can recognize and prioritize key insights, adapt your thinking strategies on the fly, and generate holistic, multifaceted solutions. People skilled at attention agility notice evolving circumstances and consider a broad range of perspectives and possibilities.
Attention agility is the capacity to shift one’s focus and perspective quickly and easily in response to the dynamic demands of complex and uncertain conditions.
Attention agility is akin to mindfulness. It’s simultaneously sophisticated and simple. Like mindfulness, attention agility is less about doing something new and more about heightened awareness and managing distraction. A driver applies attention agility when switching from autopilot to vigilance as the road conditions change. A leader applies attention agility when challenging assumptions, watching trends, and taking in diverse stakeholder perspectives.
SCAN
In 1938, Orson Welles and his troupe of radio actors broadcast a story about a Martian invasion of Earth. The broadcast, known as ‘The War of the Worlds,’ was written and acted to sound like an emergency interruption of regular programming. Historical accounts of the broadcast differ on how many people recognized it as a hoax and how many panicked. My father heard the broadcast and told me that he simply checked to see if other stations were reporting news of an alien invasion. When he discovered that it was only being reported by the Columbia Broadcasting System, he sat back and enjoyed the program.
You can think of attention agility as the simple act of switching radio stations. Just as we have our favorite stations (or streaming channels), we also have our preferred types of information. When facing uncertain or complex situations, we tune in to the channels that provide information we trust, information that helps us feel in control. If we only attend to one kind of information, we miss the whole story. We don’t uncover new insights. We overlook risks and opportunities. We can get stuck.
We developed a framework called SCAN (Structures, Context, Assumptions, Needs) to help people pay attention to a broad spectrum of information so they notice the important, hidden influences that may be keeping them stuck. The SCAN framework facilitates the process of switching attention, especially when things get stressful, complex, and uncertain. Check out this explainer video to learn about SCAN. If you’re unaware that other channels of information exist, you won’t turn the dial. If you want to develop your attention agility, diversify your information sources. Learn to change the channel.
The teams that win “The Amazing Race” are not necessarily the most physically fit or the most worldly. Winning teams are able to shift their focus and perspectives more quickly and easily than team that get stuck and fall behind. When you watch the teams get stuck, you can tell that they’re only thinking about their challenge one way. When they switch the way they pay attention, they get unstuck.
Amazing Race teams don’t have the luxury of viewing themselves the way my wife and I watch them. But what if they did? What if a team feeling stuck could shift their perspective, even for a moment, from participant to spectator? What would they notice? What if a leadership team feeling stuck could shift their perspective? The next time my wife and I argue about finding a parking space, I’ll imagine we’re on camera. I think it might alter, at least for the moment, my preoccupation with being right.
Resolution, the noun form of the verb resolve, derives from the Latin resolvere, meaning “to loosen.” The original sense of “resolve” is not about bringing something new to a situation you want to change. Essentially, a resolution is the untying of a problematic knot. Resolving to do something literally means to get unstuck.
As the new year approaches, we set intentions, goals, and resolutions to make things better. Usually, we frame our resolutions as behavior changes. We promise to start doing something, or stop doing something, or finally accomplish that thing we’ve been meaning to do. The statistics on our ability to make good on our resolutions are not encouraging. Only 8% of respondents to an October 2023 Forbe’s survey stuck to their New Year’s resolutions for more than one month.
Maybe it would be better to remind ourselves of the true meaning of a resolution. Rather than focus on the behaviors we want to change, we could focus on loosening the knots that make changing our behaviors difficult. If we resolve to get unstuck, maybe our desired behavior changes won’t feel like such a struggle.
Rather than focus on the behaviors we want to change, we could focus on loosening the knots that make changing our behaviors difficult.
If you’ve waited until the start of a new year to adopt a change, it probably means that you anticipate the change will require commitment and effort. Otherwise, you would have simply adopted the change when it first struck you as a good idea. Waiting until January to improve things is a telltale sign that a knot needs some loosening.
You can’t loosen a knot you don’t notice. That’s where SCAN comes in. If you’re unfamiliar with the SCAN framework, check out this post. SCAN does for your mind what a physical therapist does for your body. SCAN not only provides insights into what’s got you tangled up, SCAN teaches you strategies for increasing the flexibility of your thinking.
From January to SCANuary
Let’s work through an example. I’ll take a traditional New Year’s resolution and apply the SCAN framework to identify insights and options I might be missing. Suppose I resolve to get fit, lose weight, and eat a healthier diet in 2024.
Structures: Which of my habits and routines are inconsistent with a healthy lifestyle?
Maybe I’m in the habit of eating lunch without taking a break from work. I end up choosing convenient food that I can eat quickly while keeping my attention on my computer screen. I don’t feel full and end up snacking throughout the afternoon to keep me alert. Most of what I eat during the day consists of carbohydrates. If I don’t loosen the knot of my workday routines, I won’t develop healthier eating habits.
Context: Which environmental factors outside my control create opportunities for a healthy lifestyle, which factors put a healthy lifestyle at risk?
I could be on the lookout for new apps or devices that make it easy and fun for me to track fitness data. I could learn about new studies linking some of my current behaviors to a lack of stamina or energy. Maybe I should get the results of a physical before establishing a new fitness routine. A fear of the unknown may be a knot I need to loosen so that I can learn about what’s new and what’s changing.
Assumptions: How might my beliefs, mindsets, and worldviews be responsible for the way I’m framing my resolution?
What am I comparing myself to when I imagine that my current situation needs to change? Maybe I’ve formed an image of fitness that is unrealistic or inconsistent with what I value most. If I don’t loosen the knot of my biases, I may be striving to achieve the wrong goal.
Needs: How might the concerns and perspectives of people who matter relate to my fitness goals?
Of course, getting clear on my own fears and motivations may loosen an important knot. Who else should I include in my thinking about living a healthier lifestyle? Maybe I share meals with people who won’t enjoy dining with me if I change my diet. Maybe I’m trying to impress someone without really understanding how they view me now. Maybe I need to seek out a health coach to help me get started?
I get it. Asking yourself hard questions feels more daunting than simply setting goals and taking action. So, how about this? If it’s nearing the end of January, and you find yourself among the anticipated 92% of people who are about to call it quits on your New Year’s resolution, consider SCANning for a few knots to loosen.
(AI generated the image above with the prompt: A photographic image of a work team of people sarcastically giving a thumbs up. I love the creepy smiles and extra arms!)
When leaders want something from their teams, they often call a meeting. The hope is that through a successful meeting, the team will reach an agreement that creates commitment, which, in turn, leads to action and ultimately makes an impact. That’s the dream.
However, during these meetings, leaders have a limited toolkit to gain alignment. They might use their authority, hint at a quid pro quo, or mediate conflicting opinions to reach a compromise. In the end, leaders are often left interpreting comments and body language to determine whether the appearance of agreement in the meeting will translate into actual implementation of the agreement afterward. That’s the reality.
Head nods or raised thumb emojis are meant to signal agreement, but they could, in fact, mean any number of things:
“This is a good plan. I’m ready to make it happen.”
“I can live with this proposal, but don’t expect me to make it a priority.”
“This will never work, but I’m not going to damage my career by appearing uncooperative.”
“Let’s all look like we agree so we can end the meeting.”
What can a team leader do to increase the odds that agreement, or the appearance of agreement, turns into actionable commitment? Enter CADA.
CADA
CADA is a four-step alignment-building process designed to facilitate productive group discussions about a proposed course of action. By the end of a CADA discussion, a leader will know where the team stands and can feel confident that agreements will lead to action.
The four-step CADA process:
1) Be Curious
During the first part of the discussion, the team agrees to set aside their initial reactions and judgments about the proposal. Instead, they ask questions about the basis for the proposal and the implications of acting on it. For example:
What current situation are we addressing with the proposal? Or what desired future are we hoping to achieve by acting on the proposal?
What information sources were used to shape the proposal?
Who will be impacted by adopting the proposal? How might they react?
How will we know it’s working?
2) Be Analytical
In the second part of the discussion, the team makes distinctions between facts and opinions about the proposal. They ask questions about the risks and benefits of the proposal, and they apply criteria for assessing it. For example:
What are the pros and cons of the proposal?
What options were rejected? Why were they rejected?
What criteria should we be using to assess the proposal? Based on the criteria, how does the proposal measure up versus alternatives?
Given the risks, are we better off doing nothing? If we move forward, what other priorities will be impacted?
3) Be Decisive
The team reaches a conclusion. During Step 3, the team also clarifies whether they are authorized to act on the agreement or are simply making a recommendation for approval. They ask questions about their level of commitment. For example:
Based on our analysis, what modifications are required to get full team alignment?
Who else will need to weigh in before we can act on this decision? What do they need before they can approve the decision?
How will we talk about the decision to stakeholders?
What do each of us need to feel better about any aspect of the proposal that concerns us?
4) Be Accountable
The team comes to trust that each member will make good on their commitments. They ask questions about dealing with next steps and obstacles. For example:
What will each of us do next to move things along?
What barriers to successful implementation do we anticipate, and how will we deal with them?
How will we share information with each other about what’s working and what we’ve learned?
How will progress be monitored?
The key to using CADA is ensuring that everyone is in the same conversation at the same time. In other words, don’t allow people to get analytical or decisive when the focus is on being curious.
Which college should I attend? Which job offer should I accept? Should we fix up our house or sell it and move?
Harvard psychology professor and best selling author Dan Gilbert argues that our approach to thinking through choices with significant future consequences is flawed. Gilbert has shown that we mistakenly assume our future selves will feel the same way about things as our current selves. In other words, when evaluating choices, we project our current mindsets and priorities onto the people we will become after the decision has been enacted. If the decision is consequential, we won’t be the same.
A couple may be discussing when and if they want to start a family. If you interview the couple to learn about their thought process, you’ll hear a lot about how they imagine kids will change their lives. The big assumption hiding in their deliberations is that they can rationally compare their current lives to their future lives.
Let’s say that in the current, pre-kids life the couple enjoys a weekly round of golf with another couple. It’s an important ritual that they prioritize in planning their weekly activities and commitments. The couple assumes that starting a family will spell the end of the weekly golf outings. Gilbert’s point is that when thinking through the decision, the couple can’t really weigh the pros and cons of playing golf against the pros and cons of caring for a child because they don’t have the lived experience of caring for a child to place on one side of the scale. They’re making a comparison between real feelings about their current lives against imagined feelings they can only guess at. We can’t feel the feelings of our future selves.
An alternative for thinking through consequential decisions
Step One: Stop asking, what should i do?
When faced with a decision to make, we have the unfortunate habit of asking, what should I do? The question tricks us into evaluating our options too soon. First, according to Gilbert, we should be skeptical of our ability to assess the options. Secondly, once we start comparing options, we stop imagining new, perhaps more creative possibilities.
Instead of thinking about what to do, anticipate the consequences of your options.
When people struggle with decision making, what they really want is a way to predict the future. It’s not the decision, but rather the outcomes after implementing the decision that matter. By shifting the focus from the choices to the consequences of the choices, we improve our ability to imagine the future. In other words, when I detach myself from the emotions present-me feels about my choices, I can consider how my options will feel to future-me.
… when I detach myself from the emotions present-me feels about my choices, I can consider how my options will feel to future-me.
Step Two: SCAN the consequences
The Unstuck Minds Blog introduced the SCAN framework a few years ago. In our work with organizations, we teach and apply the framework as a thinking tool to develop attention agility. Each of the four elements of SCAN (Structures, Context, Assumptions, and Needs) provide a view into different and overlooked aspects of our situations. Recently, we’ve considered how the framework might support an individual making a consequential decision.
It’s challenging to shift focus from your current choices to possible future consequences. Your current choices are defined and finite. Future consequences are vague, unpredictable, and infinite. The SCAN framework provides a systematic way to explore uncertainty and complexity.
Better questions to ask about a consequential decision
Let’s say that you want to exercise more regularly in the coming year. You are trying to decide between joining a health club, purchasing a Peloton, or hiring a personal trainer. Even though it’s a made-up situation, when you read the last sentence, it’s likely that opinions and feelings about each choice came to mind. Set aside early judgments and imagine asking the following questions instead:
Structures (how things get done in my life)
How will my current routines have to adapt to each option? What will it be like to integrate future routines into life with each option?
Context (the environmental influences of things I don’t control)
What might change in my environment that will influence how I think about the benefits and risks of each option? What might happen that don’t I control, which could change how I will feel about the decision I made?
Assumptions (my unchallenged beliefs)
What must be true in the future for each option to work out the way I want it to? What impressions will people have about me when they find out what I chose?
Needs (what matters to the people who matter)
How might my satisfaction with each option change as my needs change? How might each option impact the people who matter to me?
Step Three: Focus on adjusting to the future as it unfolds
We tend to think of decisions about the future as guessing games, like picking the cup that the pebble is under. We can be right, or we can be wrong. In reality, most of the consequential decisions we face provide a set of questions with no obvious right answer.
When you imagine consequences rather than dwell on how you currently feel about your options, you’re less likely to think of a choice as being “right” or “the best.” You’ll notice the overlapping benefits and tradeoffs of each option. You may even discover an option you hadn’t considered. When you take action to implement the decision, the future will unfold. The more consideration you give to future consequences, the more prepared you will be to adjust to whatever emerges.
In a recent podcast interview with Ezra Klein, the writer George Saunders talked about the power of literature. We feel about SCAN the way Saunders described great literature. “In the end,” he said, “you don’t have an answer, but you have new respect for the question.”
