When a decision won’t move, most teams do the same thing: gather more data, debate options, push harder.
Pam Scott and Di Tompkins take a different approach. After 25+ years of working together, they’ve learned that when something feels stuck, it’s usually not about the answer. It’s about the question. Here are a few ways they think about it:
Interrogate the question
Before jumping to solutions, slow down and unpack what’s actually being asked. Is the question framed too narrowly? Too broadly? Is it even solving the right problem?
Pam and Di will spend time pulling a question apart from every angle: what’s behind it, what’s driving it, what might be missing. Because once the question shifts, the entire conversation tends to change with it.
You can’t solve everything from the inside
There’s a reason outside perspective matters.
They describe it as bringing a different “color to paint with.” When you’re too close to a problem, you’re limited by your own context, assumptions, and history. A new perspective changes how you see the problem in the first place.
Insight should open things up
Insight isn’t there to confirm what you already think, it’s there to challenge it. The goal isn’t more data. It’s a deeper understanding that creates movement. The kind that surfaces new opportunities, reveals tension, and pushes thinking in a direction you hadn’t considered before.
Know when it’s intuition versus bias
Instinct plays a role in decision-making, but it’s not always reliable. The real skill is knowing when your intuition is grounded in experience and pattern recognition and when it’s being shaped by bias, fear, or habit. That distinction is what leads to better, more confident decisions.
People don’t need to agree, but they need to feel heard
Not everyone needs to be aligned on the final decision, but they do need to feel like their perspective was considered. When people are part of the process, decisions move faster and land more effectively.
Getting unstuck isn’t about forcing an answer. It’s about seeing the problem differently.
You can hear how Pam Scott and Di Tompkins put this into practice in their full conversation on The Cred Podcast.
