Imagine a homing pigeon without a home. It would fly aimlessly and starve to death. But with a home, the pigeon can start from anywhere and choose among many routes to return to the roost.

And yet people tend to operate like homeless homing pigeons all the time. We argue about the routes to the roost without first agreeing on its location. In other words, we constantly debate the alternatives without first agreeing on the objectives. The evidence is everywhere. And the consequence is waste – wasted time, wasted money, and wasted opportunity. 

I recently attended an annual meeting of an organization where the group argued about the contents and format of an internet survey. As a newcomer, I just listened until I could stand it no longer and then I asked what they were hoping to achieve with the survey and how they had been using the data from the paper survey up until that point.

Suddenly it was dead quiet.

Finally someone said that they just thought it would be good information to have and they went back to their argument. They had no specific objective that the survey was supposed to help them achieve. They had been doing a paper survey for years and had never looked at the results. The only objective this group was guaranteed to achieve was wasting time – theirs and that of members kind enough to fill out the survey.

Similar examples abound throughout politics, business and life.

Take politics. No matter what side of any issue you are on, you have to be able to see that our political debates are incredibly guilty of leaping to alternatives before agreeing on objectives.

• We debate sending more troops to Iraq before we have agreed on any kind of picture of what we hope to achieve in Iraq. What might success look like at this point? If we could paint a reasonable picture, wouldn’t the discussions of how to make it happen be a lot easier? What are the objectives?
• We debate amnesty, fines and more for illegal immigrants before we have agreed on whether we need and want these people in our country. What are we trying to achieve?
• We debate raising the minimum wage without revisiting its purpose. Let’s first agree on whom we are trying to help. Is it dependent children living at home and in need of spending money? Or is it parents with children? Who is currently receiving minimum wage, for how long, and why? What problem are we trying to solve?

In your business, it might look like this:

• Debating the contents and design of a website without first discussing what the website is meant to achieve
• Deciding when to meet and whom to invite without first agreeing on the purpose of a meeting
• Debating a major technology investment without first identifying the problem it is meant to solve or establishing the strategy that it needs to support

As an individual, perhaps you can relate to these:

• Deciding where to invest your money without first considering your investment goals and timeframe
• Trying to decide which computer to buy without first thinking about what you want to be able to do with it
• Debating a vacation destination without first deciding what kind of things you want to be able to do

How can anyone make good decisions without starting with a clear purpose? You can’t, of course, though sometimes you get lucky. After all, even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while. If you want to avoid wasting time, money and opportunities, always give your homing pigeon a home. Always stop to ask:

• “What are we trying to accomplish?”
• “What problem are we trying to solve?”
• “What are our objectives?”

Once you settle on objectives, identifying and weighing the alternatives gets much easier. Without clear objectives, your debates are akin to the aimless flight of a homing pigeon without a home.