What Are We Missing?

A story on Bloomberg.com caught my eye late last week.

The headline read, “Immigration Is Fueling US Economic Growth While Politicians Rage.”

The subheads read, “Goldman boosts GDP growth forecast amid immigration surge” and “HSBC says no advanced economy is benefiting like the US.”

The gains, the article reported, are being driven both by legal and illegal immigration and included agreement by JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, BNP Paribas and CBO, among others.

Before you go, wait.

My topic today isn’t politics and it’s not about immigration policy.

It’s about decision making.

I was struck by the Bloomberg report because it was raising points that few others have been raising. ?I haven’t personally heard or seen a politician on either side of the aisle talking about the other side of the coin of immigration – economic growth – and these are the people who are responsible for making decisions about immigration.

Seems to me that, in one way or another, economic growth ought to be a part of the decision-making process surrounding immigration.

That brings me to my broader point, which is that in the course of daily decision making in the corporate world, we all need to tap the brakes as we consider various courses of action and ask ourselves, “What are we missing?”

I used to pose this question at every meeting I hosted where meaningful decisions were being contemplated.

Often (perhaps too often), we satisfied ourselves that we weren’t missing anything relevant and meaningful to the issue at hand. So we moved forward.

Sometimes, the question spurred debate that either ended up affirming or changing a decision.

And sometimes the question sent us off to do more homework.

If you aren’t deliberately including the question, “what are we missing?” in your decision making, you are probably missing something. ?