Organizations typically spend hundreds of hours defining scope for projects and initiatives. This is essential for determining resource allocation, budgets, and timelines. But “scope” is a dangerous word. It can be used to mean either specific deliverables or broader outcomes and teams usually default to zeroing in on the deliverables — checking them off generates a sense of fast progress. But this hyper focus on tactics versus end goals also creates an endless expansion of activities that disrupt both schedules and investments. I’ve seen this occur in almost every client engagement at my company, which designs strategies to help organizations differentiate across competitive landscapes. The executive leaders and their teams spend inordinate amounts of time and energy debating various project tactics, while consistently disregarding, undermining, or even failing to consider the larger outcomes they want to achieve. How can such a habitual problem be effectively addressed?