When I was in grad school I took an elective class: Public Dispute Resolution. The majority of my classmates were Political Science and Philosophy majors. I was the only person in the room with an engineering degree.
One day we were asked to analyze a hypothetical community problem involving multiple levels of government. A highway passing through this fictional town needed to be expanded by two lanes in each direction to alleviate traffic congestion throughout the day.
The problem was one particular section of the existing highway barely split between a historically significant building and a garden that was important to a local minority community. There was simply not enough room to expand the highway without compromising one landmark or the other.
We split into small groups to speculate on a needs assessment for the fictional stakeholders and strategize on the best course of action that would earn agreement from all parties.
The groups broke to discuss potential resolutions as a class. The prevailing sentiment of the class was the highway should be expanded as required in all areas except the particular section in question. The historic building and garden would both be saved.
At this point I felt compelled to speak out. This oversight would critically compromise the purpose of the highway expansion all together. Quite literally a “bottleneck” depicts how flow is restricted by its narrowest point (Picture turning a full two-liter bottle upside down. Now picture turning a full two-liter bucket upside down). Unless traffic could be increased to impractically high speeds for this particular section of highway, then the traffic congestion would continue in this same area as it had before the highway expansion.
Expanding the highway may or may not have been practically feasible given the challenges. The challenges surrounding the actual expansion of the highway were complex and nuanced. But the literal solution to speed up the flow of traffic was not complex or nuanced. The class flat out failed.
Your leaders can be this class. Your leaders can be comprised of your college educated peers. They can be well meaning and considerate to all stakeholders. And they can provide expensive solutions to complex and nuanced problems that provide no solution at all. You can lose more than you started with when the means lose their connection to the goal.