the “but what about” list

When my team was scaling COVIDCheck, our mission was to deliver a proactive and equitable response to COVID-19 so people could get back into community safely. Our tool for this at the start was diagnostic testing and, later, vaccine doses. 

In the early-middle days, after we survived a few existential scares and knew we’d be cooking for at least 3-6 more months, I got the humblest, “in it for the right reasons” folks on the team to talk with me about the “but what about” list.

This is the list of items that fill in the blank that follows: “We achieved our mission, based on the best data we have. But what about ______?”

• Taking the very best care we can of front-line clinical workers, day to day 

• Helping our team in the next part of their careers when this emergency response is over

• Using any profit we may eventually earn to compound our impact

• Making the experience for each patient feel actually good and affirming, not just tolerably short

This list was a way of heightening our ambition and digging deeper into our values. The orgs I admire most seem to have a list like this guiding their growth and choices. They see success as something richer and more interesting than “number go up.” Once they’ve built the team and system for their core mission, they look at other aligned assignments their values might offer or demand.

A risk of the list is the “but what abouts” crowd out your core mission, the thing you exist to do. In trying to complete the list, you serve a bunch of constituencies but lose the devotion to your most important customer or community. You shouldn’t swap your mission for this list. The list is a way of adding “beautiful constraints” that shape the way you chase the mission.

A list like this can unlock a competitive advantage for you, too. In a blue ocean strategy kinda way, it forces you to look beyond the game of the status quo. You can add a whole column to the chess board and that can make what you’re doing more noticeable, appealing, and helpful than what your competitors are doing. 

-eric