Early in my consulting career I was assigned to work with a leader I'll call Doug. Star programmer. Well liked. The go-to person when something sticky needed fixing. His organization had promoted him to run an entire office, partnering with operations, customers, and leadership across the IT organization.

Doug was drowning. The technical skills that earned the promotion were real, but the job had changed underneath him. He wasn't solving problems anymore. He was leading people who solved problems. And nobody had shown him the difference.

I was nervous. Doug knew more about his domain than I ever would. I called my mentor, Larry Danner, who had been consulting senior leaders for years, and asked how I was supposed to add value to someone more knowledgeable than me.

Larry walked to a whiteboard and wrote three words: past, present, future. Then he gave me a question to use with Doug whenever he reached a decision point.

"Ask him: why are you making this decision?"

Larry explained: if Doug answers "we're making this decision because of..." then he's focused on the past. He's using old conditions to shape his perceived future. If Doug answers "we're making this decision in order to..." then he's focused on the future and the possibilities in front of him.

Two words. Because of. In order to. The difference between those two phrases is the difference between a leader defending old ground and a leader building new ground. I've been listening for it in every room since.

The corporate version sounds like: "We do it this way because that's how we've always done it." I heard it in organizations that had inherited procedures from leaders three generations back and never questioned whether the conditions that created those procedures still existed. The procedure was the answer. Nobody asked whether it was still the right question.

In government consulting, I watched agencies spend months gathering more data before making decisions they already had enough information to make. Larry had a framework for that too. He drew a graph with leadership level on one axis and information needed on the other. As you move up, the volume and complexity of information multiplies while the time for each decision shrinks. Leaders who try to master every fact instead of reading what the facts mean get stuck in what Larry called the transitory zone, the gap between knowledge and significance.

The FAA gave him a perfect example. The White House asked a simple question: how long is the runway at a major airport? Should have taken an hour. Instead it took nearly a week. Thirty different databases with conflicting numbers. An airport expansion that nobody had reported. The FAA had facts. They had knowledge. They couldn't pull them together into a coherent answer because nobody had built the system to move from what we know to what it means.

I see the aviation version in businesses every week. The MRO owner who keeps adding certifications because that's what built the business originally, without asking whether those certifications serve the customer base they have now. The association leader who surveys the membership again before taking a position on a policy issue, because the last survey justified the last decision, and the one before that justified the one before that. The leader who won't commit to a direction until they have all the data, which means they never commit, because there's always more data.

Every one of those leaders is making decisions "because of." Past conditions. Past successes. Past data. The reasoning points backward even when the question is about the future.

KEY TAKEAWAY: Two words separate the leaders who build from the leaders who defend. "Because of" points backward. "In order to" points forward. Most leaders don't realize which direction they're facing until someone asks.

I've turned Larry's question into something I run on myself. The next time you're in a meeting where a decision is being made, listen to how the reasoning is framed. Not the conclusion. The reasoning.

"We're restructuring the team because our last hire didn't work out." That's past-focused. The failed hire is driving the decision. Compare that to: "We're restructuring the team in order to build a leadership layer that survives the next transition." Same action. Different orientation. The second version forces you to articulate what you're building toward. The first version only tells you what went wrong.

The shift sounds small. In practice it changes which information you prioritize, which questions you ask, and what the team spends its energy on. A "because of" culture spends time explaining and defending. An "in order to" culture spends time designing and building.

For any leader reading this, here's the diagnostic. Pick the last three decisions your team made. Write down the reasoning behind each one. Look at whether the reasoning starts with "because of" or "in order to." If two out of three point backward, your decision-making is anchored to conditions that may no longer apply.

Larry drew three words on a whiteboard thirty seconds into our first conversation. I've used them for years. The question hasn't changed. The leaders who answer "in order to" are the ones whose organizations keep moving. The ones who answer "because of" are the ones defending ground they didn't choose.

The leaders who move organizations forward are the ones who can answer one question clearly: what are you building toward?

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Written by Travis Wright | ETL Advisory

Leadership and strategy for the people who lead aviation and the organizations that serve it.

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