You’ve got a meeting in mind, some horrible meeting where the issue is so complex that there’s no way the simple identification process I described could apply. Wrong. You’re jumping to solve the issue and that’s where everyone fucks this up. Who cares about the issue? Do you know who matters in whatever horrible meeting you’re sitting in? Did you take the time to identify the people who actually care—the ones who can make a difference? If you didn’t, you deserve every useless minute of that meeting.
