I Want to Continue the Conversation With You!
Problem-solving begins with the typing of the problem.
“So what problem are you solving?” I asked the young girl in front of me, she smiles and takes a deep breath as she is about to submerge herself underwater. And off we go…
This is a question I always ask people who apply for a job, build, engineer or design something. And often, just as the girl I just mentioned above, they will enthusiastically start to describe the product or service they are building. 20 minutes into their rant about how great their solution is, I will interrupt and repeat my question; “I understand now what solution you are building, but what problem are you solving?”.
At this point, they often start to stumble, eyes desperately looking left and right to see if anyone can come to their aid. And their story doesn’t flow as well as when they can recite their rehearsed talk about their work and solutions.
I have a rule of thumb, if you mention your product, service or solution in the user problem statement then it’s probably not a user problem. And if you do, you will see that I quickly lose interest and will focus more on what’s happening outside my window. Hence I’ve never been interested in conversations or sales pitches at the bar on late-night convention parties, that describe in detail a perfect solution or a product. But listening to someone dedicated who understands a problem through behaviour changing insights, and manages to convey these insights without describing their solution, leaving me to think for myself, makes me want to continue the conversation after they’ve left.
At the end of the day, I would like to work with those who succeed, and successful problem solvers are more able to determine the deep structure of a problem before they proceed to match a strategy to it. Less successful problem solvers a more like students, they mentally classify problems by simple features and overtly stated features like the domain context.
Charles Kettering, the celebrated inventor and head of research at General Motors, once said that a problem well stated is a problem half solved. Most people today would probably agree. And yet, it’s not what most people usually do.
