When faced with a dilemma – or simply wanting to make a change – research shows “What should I do?” is a terrible thing to ask.
An acquaintance worked for a small-town bike shop, and a friend told him – in confidence – that a competing shop would be opening soon.
He was torn. As most of us do, he reflexively nodded his head when his friend said, “Promise you won’t tell anyone.” Yet he also felt loyal to his employer, and this was news the shop’s owner clearly needed to know.
The result is a moral dilemma, a problem without an obvious “right” answer; choosing confidentiality to a friend would mean forgoing loyalty to his employer, and vice versa.
“What should I do?” he asked me.
Oddly enough, research shows the first thing he should do (h/t to Daniel Pink’s Pinkcast) is use another word besides “should.”
“Should” Limits
According to a number of studies, moral dilemmas that involve tradeoffs between competing values or principles are among the most common, and are definitely the most difficult, ethical challenges people face at work.
Choosing to ship sub-standard product because you don’t want to eat the re-work cost isn’t a moral or ethical dilemma; however difficult that decision might feel – and I know, because I’ve had to make it (more on that in a moment) — there is a right answer.
But here’s where it gets interesting. When a moral or ethical issue arises, research shows that most organizations, and people, tend to frame the problem as, “What should we do?”
Yet when an issue pops up that isn’t moral or ethical – like whether to work overtime this weekend to prevent missing ship dates – people are much less likely to frame the issue in terms of “should.”
Which is a good thing, because “should” typically limits the field of possibilities. “Should” implies a limited set of choices. Often, as research shows, just two choices. Tell my boss about the new bike shop, or not; ship bad product, or not; work this weekend, or not.
Unfortunately, most leaders tend to use “should” when they ask for input or feedback. After all, they’ve given the issue some thought, sifted through possibilities, and come up with what they feel are the two best options. So they present the issue as an either/or.
“What should we do? Work this weekend, or hope Thursday and Friday go well and we manage to catch up?”
“Could” Empowers
All of which is a problem, because as a study published in Academy of Management Journal found, simply substituting the word “could” for “should” causes people to generate a lot more solutions as well as much better solutions.
And greater moral insight, which can lead to finding a solution that resolves a seemingly conflicting moral or ethical imperative.
Why? “Could” opens things up. “Could” implies you haven’t narrowed the solution set to a couple of choices. “Could” implies blue skies and green fields and unlimited possibilities.
“Should” feels like something you have to do.
“Could” feels like something you get to do.
As the researchers write:
… considering what one could do shifts people from analyzing and weighing what they assume to be fixed and mutually exclusive alternatives to generating options that might reconcile underlying imperatives. Having a could mindset helps individuals engage in divergent thinking.
(And) in group contexts, we find that adopting a could mindset encouraged individuals to spend more time discussing these dilemmas and generating more ideas.
Take the question of shipping bad product, or re-running the job. I might have asked, “Should we just scrap everything and rework the whole job, or should we ship everything and hope the customer doesn’t notice?”
Most people will pick one answer or the other.
But there’s a better approach. “There are defects throughout the whole order,” I, um, should have said. “What do you think we could do?”
One person might recommend scrapping the job. Another might recommend the tried-and-rarely-true “ship and hope” approach.
But another might say, “What if we tell the customer there’s a problem, ship the job to them, and send one of our crews to their warehouse to sort product. That way they can at least use what is good instead of waiting for the entire job to be re-run.”
Try it. The next time there’s a problem, don’t think, “What should I do?” Don’t say, “What should we do?”
State the problem, and ask, “What could we do?” You’ll come up with more solutions. And better solutions.
Some you never would have considered, had you – or your team – stuck with “should.”
