Give People Something To Disagree With

Or agree with!

Often when trying to come up with a plan for a complex problem groups can get stuck in the stage of tossing out ideas. It's great to spend time doing this, discussing the pros and cons of different approaches, but at some point you need an agreed upon plan and start executing.

A good way to get to the point where you have an actionable plan is to just clearly state one as a starting point.

For example, if the issue is "We need to adjust our latency monitors to be more actionable" you can come back with "Ok, at the end of the week I'm going to set the monitors to page on an average latency over 800ms unless there are any issues with that".

The point isn't to hold your ground and insist on your plan being the final plan, but to establish a default plan that will be executed on unless people make other suggestions. This changes the thinking from ideating about possible solutions to refining an existing solution which feels more tangible and can encourage more timely feedback (because you've established a deadline for when the default action will take place).

It's easier to discuss adjustments to an established plan than to come up with a new one from scratch, so just start with something reasonable and use as a starting point to get things going.