You don’t need to completely change how you work.
For your next important task, project, or meeting, pause before you begin and ask:
“What might be missing here?”
Then consider five possibilities:
- missing information
- missing context
- missing people
- missing ownership
- missing contingency
You may not find anything.
That’s fine.
But occasionally you’ll discover something important before anyone else does.
And the more often you practice looking beyond what’s already visible, the better you’ll become at seeing the gaps that others overlook.
That can make you more than reliable.
It can make you useful in situations where the answer isn’t obvious yet.
And that’s one of the qualities that can quietly move a career forward.
Because organizations don’t only need people who can execute a plan.
They need people who can look at the plan and say:
“Before we go any further, is there something important we haven’t considered?”