The ability to think critically and participate in robust debate are core skills needed by executives and boards. In What’s Wrong With Boards: Rethinking corporate governance, author Professor Fred Hilmer emphasises time and again that completing a skills matrix for a board and recruiting to complete it is wholeheartedly insufficient if these types of skills don’t come with the director appointed.

A classic error in any debate on strategic direction is to spend more time on options than on the best assumptions to move forward with. It’s our tendency to move straight to solution without ensuring we have truly clarified the landscape we are deciding within.

Worse still, sometimes the debate that rages is not even answering the right question. This can be due to the problem being poorly framed or hidden motivations that are either driving an agenda or blocking the view of bias brought to the table.

You and your team will always face an incomplete reality no matter the strategic choices you need to make. How you go about facing that reality determines the quality of your decisions.