“What should we do?” is one of the most common questions in business. We ask it when sales decline, a marketing campaign underperforms, the team is struggling, costs increase, growth stalls, or an opportunity requires a decision. It’s a reasonable question because running a business ultimately requires action.

The problem is how quickly we ask it.

By the time an issue reaches the founder or leadership team, there is usually pressure to respond. Someone needs a decision. A customer is waiting. Money is being spent. Revenue may be affected. Moving quickly toward an answer can feel responsible, and sometimes it is.

But before asking what the business should do, there is another question worth asking:

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What do we need to understand before we decide?

That small change can lead to a very different decision because it gives us time to understand the situation before committing resources to a solution.

Be Careful How You Define the Problem

Many business conversations begin after the problem has already been framed:

• “We need better marketing.”
• “We need another employee.”
• “We need to lower the price.”
• “We need a better system.”
• “We need to increase sales.”

Each statement sounds like a problem, but several of them already contain a proposed solution.

If we decide the business needs better marketing, the conversation naturally turns toward campaigns, content, advertising, lead generation, or other marketing tactics. If we decide we need another employee, we start talking about hiring.

That can move the conversation forward quickly, but only if the original conclusion is right.

Consider “We need to increase sales.” The objective may be obvious, but the reason sales are below expectations may not be.

The business could have several very different situations:

• Not enough of the right people know the company exists.
• Prospects are finding the business but don’t understand why they should choose it.
• Qualified leads are entering the sales process but not converting.
• Customers are buying once and not returning.
• Demand exists, but the business doesn’t have the capacity to serve more customers.

Each can affect revenue. They don’t require the same response.

That’s why defining the situation matters. A perfectly reasonable tactic won’t help much if it’s addressing the wrong problem.

Ask What You Need to Understand

Better questions don’t have to be complicated. They need to help you uncover information that matters to the decision.

If customers aren’t buying, asking “How do we get more leads?” assumes the business needs more prospects. Before reaching that conclusion, it may be more useful to ask:

“What is happening between the point where someone discovers us and the point where they decide whether to buy?”

Now you have room to look at who is being attracted, whether the offer is clear, where prospects lose interest, what objections come up, and what happens during the sales process.

The same principle applies internally.

If the team is struggling to keep up, “Who should we hire?” assumes additional capacity is the answer. Asking “What is creating the pressure on the team?” gives you a chance to look at workload, responsibilities, processes, priorities, approvals, communication, and actual capacity before adding another salary.

You may still decide to hire. The difference is that you’ll understand why you’re hiring and what you expect that person to change.

That is the point of Diagnosis Before Tactics™. It isn’t about slowing every decision down or turning routine business problems into lengthy strategic exercises. It’s about understanding enough to make the action you take more useful.

Look Beyond the Most Obvious Explanation

Sometimes the issue really is exactly where it appears to be. A poorly performing campaign may simply be a poorly performing campaign. An overloaded team may genuinely need another person.

A broader view becomes useful when the explanation isn’t that clear.

The Business360 Method® looks at six interconnected areas of a business: Business Strategy, Brand Positioning, Marketing, Communication, Operations, and Leadership.

That doesn’t mean every problem requires an exhaustive review of all six. It means we don’t automatically assume the visible symptom tells us everything we need to know.

If a marketing campaign isn’t producing results, for example, you may need to evaluate the campaign itself. But you may also discover that the wrong audience is being attracted, the positioning isn’t clear, the message is creating expectations the offer doesn’t meet, or the business isn’t prepared to handle the demand the campaign is intended to generate.

A 360-degree perspective gives you more places to look. Diagnosis helps determine which of those places actually matter.

Two Questions Can Tell You a Lot

When something in the business changes, two questions can be especially useful.

What changed?

If leads suddenly decline, look at what changed around the time the decline began. Did marketing activity change? Did the audience shift? Did a competitor enter the market? Was pricing adjusted? Did something change in the sales process?

If the team starts missing deadlines, look at what changed there. Did workload increase? Were responsibilities reassigned? Did priorities multiply? Did someone leave? Was a new system introduced?

This question is useful because it doesn’t automatically assume something failed. Growth itself can change performance. More customers can expose weaknesses in a process that worked well at a smaller scale. A growing team can make informal communication less effective.

Understanding what changed gives the current problem context.

What would we expect to see if our explanation is right?

Suppose you believe customers aren’t buying because the price is too high. What evidence would support that conclusion?

Are qualified prospects consistently identifying price as the reason they don’t move forward? Did conversion change after the price increased? Are customers choosing lower-priced alternatives after clearly understanding the differences between the offers?

If the evidence doesn’t match the explanation, price may not be the issue.

The same applies when you believe the team is overloaded because there aren’t enough people. If that’s true, you would expect to see workload consistently exceeding reasonable capacity. If the real delays are coming from unclear responsibilities, unnecessary approvals, or inefficient processes, hiring another person may add capacity without removing the problem.

Neither question guarantees the right answer. They help you test whether the explanation you’re using actually fits what is happening.

Good Questions Make Action More Useful

Throughout October, Diagnosis Before Tactics™ has focused on what happens before we commit time, money, people, or other resources to a solution.

We’ve looked at the temptation to move quickly toward an answer, the assumptions that can influence our decisions, the complexity created when businesses keep adding solutions, and the way experience can cause an old conclusion to feel permanently true.

Those ideas lead to a straightforward sequence:

Understand → Evaluate → Decide → Act

Understanding gives you context. Evaluation helps you determine what the information means and which options make sense. The decision provides direction. Action puts resources behind it.

Businesses sometimes reverse that order. We act first, evaluate the result, and only then begin to understand what the original problem may have been.

Sometimes the tactic works. Other times, we spend time and money learning something we could have discovered before we committed the resources.

This isn’t an argument for endless analysis. Business owners rarely have perfect information, and waiting until every uncertainty disappears is not realistic.

The goal is to understand enough to make a sound decision.

Before You Ask, “What Should We Do?”

The next time an important business issue lands in front of you, you don’t need to immediately build a list of solutions.

Start with what you need to understand.

Depending on the situation, that might mean asking:

• What do we actually know?
• What are we assuming?
• What changed?
• What evidence would support the explanation we’re considering?
• What else in the business could be influencing what we’re seeing?
• What does the next decision actually need to accomplish?

You won’t need every question every time. You may only need one of them to see the situation differently.

Once you understand enough to know what you’re trying to change, “What should we do?” becomes a much more useful question.

Taking Diagnosis Before Tactics™ Further

October’s Diagnosis Before Tactics™ series has been about changing the order in which we approach business decisions. Tactics matter, but they become far more useful when we understand why we’re using them and what we expect them to accomplish.

That principle is central to The Business360 Method®. Business Strategy, Brand Positioning, Marketing, Communication, Operations, and Leadership influence one another, and better decisions come from knowing which parts of the business actually matter to the issue in front of you.

I’ll be taking this methodology deeper in an upcoming paid workshop, where we’ll move beyond the individual ideas we’ve explored this month and look at how a 360-degree perspective can be used to evaluate business challenges before committing resources to the next tactic.

Workshop registration details are coming soon.

Until then, think about a business decision you’re facing right now. Before you ask yourself what you should do about it, start here:

What do I need to understand before I decide?

— Tammy S. Drost
Founder & CEO
The Business360 Method®