What Should Happen Next?

Last time, I wrote about what happens when everyone has the information and nothing changes.

The lesson was simple: Don't prescribe another communication until you've diagnosed what's actually failing.

But diagnosis creates another responsibility. Once you understand the problem, someone has to answer: What should happen next?

That's where analysis becomes advising.

Imagine you've investigated a communication problem. You interviewed employees. Reviewed the emails. Looked at the process. Talked to managers. Followed the handoffs between departments. And discovered three things:

Now you have evidence.

But evidence alone doesn't tell leadership what to do.

You could: 1) send clearer instructions; 2) rewrite the procedure; 3) hold another training session; 4) ask managers to communicate with their teams; 5) create a decision tree; 6) change who owns the process; 7) or redesign the workflow entirely.

All of those are actions. They aren't all equally useful. Someone has to make a judgment.

This is a distinction I've been thinking about in my own work. It's possible to become very good at identifying problems. You can interview people. Analyze information. Find patterns. Explain what's going wrong. Produce a beautiful report.

And still leave the most important question unanswered: So what should we do?

Advising leadership requires another step.You have to be willing to say:

In our example, I might recommend that leadership not send another organization-wide communication.

The evidence suggests employees already have the information.

Instead, I might recommend:

Create one agreed-upon operating procedure for managers, establish who owns its interpretation, and give managers a short set of scenarios to practice before communicating the change to their teams.

A useful recommendation should connect four things:

Evidence → Diagnosis → Recommendation → Expected Outcome

For example:

Evidence: Employees report receiving contradictory instructions from managers.

Diagnosis: This isn't primarily an employee awareness problem. It's inconsistent interpretation at the management level.

Recommendation: Standardize the decision rules and practice them with managers.

Expected outcome: Managers give employees consistent direction when the same situations occur.

That is stronger than: "Communication needs to improve."

The recommendation tells us what should change, where intervention should happen, and what improvement should look like.

There is another uncomfortable part. Recommendations eliminate possibilities.

If I recommend spending time fixing manager interpretation, I'm also recommending that we don't spend that same time rewriting information employees already understand.

That's why advising isn't simply generating ideas. It's exercising judgment under constraints: Time is limited. Money is limited. Attention is limited. People are limited.

Leadership doesn't need twenty things they could do. They need help determining: What should happen next?

Think about a problem you're currently analyzing. Maybe you've gathered information. Talked about it. Made a list of possibilities. Maybe you've been thinking about it for weeks.

Ask yourself: If I had to recommend one next action based on the evidence I have right now, what would it be?

Then finish this sentence:

Based on ________, I recommend ________ because ________. I expect this to result in ________.

You don't need perfect certainty. You need enough evidence to make a reasoned recommendation—and enough accountability to see what happens after it's implemented.

Because eventually, advising has to become action. Next time, we'll deal with the problem that appears immediately afterward: What happens when everything seems important?

Greg K. Campbell