Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen

by Dan Heath

Here are four questions to include in your pre-gaming: The “rising tides” test: Imagine that we succeed on our short-term measures. What else might explain that success, other than our own efforts, and are we tracking those factors? The misalignment test: Imagine that we’ll eventually learn that our short-term measures do not reliably predict success on our ultimate mission. What would allow us to sniff out that misalignment as early as possible, and what alternate short-term measures might provide potential replacements? The lazy bureaucrat test: If someone wanted to succeed on these measures with the least effort possible, what would they do? The defiling-the-mission test: Imagine that years from now, we have succeeded brilliantly according to our short-term measures, yet we have actually undermined our long-term mission. What happened?

There’s a fifth question, too, that should be asked, and it’s so complicated that we’ll spend the next full chapter exploring it: The unintended consequences test: What if we succeed at our mission—not just the short-term measures but the mission itself—yet cause negative unintended consequences that outweigh the value of our work? What should we be paying attention to that’s offstage from our work?