Don't Solve: Discover!

Like many things in life, you may have found a solution before fully understanding the problem.

Its not an uncommon situation: you go shopping for something and then you are distracted by something interesting which you were not planning to get. In your mind, you imagine this new thing solving a problem that you believe you have and you get it. Let me pose this question: are you actually solving a problem or are you imagining that you are?

The challenge in this is that you may not actually be aware of the problem before you’ve found something to fix it with. That’s impulse shopping for you; the principles apply in business as well. Often we find ourselves imagining and acting on a solution before we fully understand the problem we are trying to solve.

What we are usually lacking is time and information. Information usually takes time to acquire and understand and there is always pressure to act quickly and decisively. So we all end up quickly defining the solution before we actually understand the problem we are trying to solve. The key here is to actually take the thought and time to understand what the problem you are trying to solve actually is. Get the data you need, launch a survey, download the reports you require and take the time to analyze. If you can’t, ask someone to help.

All you need to do is ask someone; they can very likely point you in the right direction.

If I had an hour to solve a problem I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.

Albert Einstein