Understanding The Problem Before You Solve it

The First Step to Any Successful Endeavor

Introduction

The single biggest mistake that I see people make in their approach to their work, or even life ambitions more broadly, is that they haven’t clearly defined and understood the problems they are trying to solve. To a large degree, this is due to having poorly defined goals, but even with clear goals, many people often make the mistake of rushing to solve poorly defined problems. In this Meta Strategy article, I will explain the importance of understanding problems before you solve them, and give you a few examples of how this can be applied to different types of work such that you can be better equipped to understand and solve the problems you are working on.

Philosophy

The first step in explaining any idea is laying out the philosophy underlying it. I will explore this idea more when I write my article on how to explain your work in the career search, and might actually make this it’s own meta strategy, but for now, trust me when I say that understanding the why behind the what is essential to learning.

Goal Setting

I am not going to go into too much detail here as this concept deserves its own article (I know, I have a lot more articles to write), but it is necessary to address as goal setting is a prerequisite to defining the right problems to be solved. A clearly defined goal will reveal what problems you should focus on solving and those problems, when solved, should move you closer to accomplishing your goals. And you should be able to prioritize solving the problems that are most important to your goal.

Simply put, make sure you understand your goals; then you can understand the problems and make sure they contribute to achieving your goal.

Solving The Right Problem

The obvious danger of not comprehensively defining and understanding the problems you are trying to solve is that you waste a bunch of time solving the wrong problem. And this happens way more than you think. Marcus Aurelius wrote “People who labor all their lives but have no purpose to direct every thought and impulse toward are wasting their time, even when hard at work.”

This is to say that many people feel like they are being productive, but if that work is not solving the right problem that actually moves them toward their goal, their work is wasted. No matter how hard you row, if you are going the wrong direction, all that effort is wasted.

Extracting The Problem

You will see in the examples section of this article that being able to extract the problem from your client, customer, or stakeholder is a key skill that everyone has to develop to be successful. Often a stakeholder will come to you to solve a problem they don’t even fully understand or haven’t even defined! Many people do a poor job of understanding their own goals and problems. So it is your job as someone who is responsible for solving this problem to help them define it.

I like to use the analogy of a therapist. A good therapist doesn’t tell you what to think or do. A good therapist works with you, by asking questions, to help you think about your problems and come up with your own solutions. As you will see in the examples, often it falls on us in our professional capacities to help our clients, customers, or stakeholders to better define their problems to ensure that the work we do actually delivers value toward our styakeholder’s goals.

Prepare Then Execute

All of this to say that the preparation you put in at the beginning to define your goals and your problems will pay off many times over. If you take away one thing from this article it is to spend time at the start to really dig into the problem you are solving and clearly understand it. You will see this illustrated in the following sections as I explain how understanding the problem before you solve it can be applied.

Feedback Loops to Update Your Understanding of The Problem

I will talk about the importance of feedback loops in other articles more in depth, but when solving a problem, it is important to understand that you most likely will not have a perfect understanding of the problem at the beginning no matter how much work you put in. You will need to update and adjust as you go. Therefore, it is important to build feedback loops into your work such that you can continue to refine your understanding of the problem as you go and ensure you will arrive at the right solution.

Practical Examples

One of the most powerful ways to explain concepts is to show them in action with real world examples. The following are examples pulled from my experience recruiting for different roles and how this idea of understanding the problem before you solve it can be applied in those areas.

When I interview candidates, I always ask them to explain their approach to their work to me and to really nail this question, candidates should always start with explaining how they understand their problem before they solve it. Let me show you what I mean.

Salespeople Problems

The goal of a salesperson is to sell their product, but this is not the problem they are trying to solve. To be successful, salespeople need to understand the real problem to effective selling: their customer’s problem.

I am sure you have heard about the consultative approach to sales. You need to talk to your client, understand what they care about and what their problems are. Only then can you sell effectively. This is that idea of problem extraction at work. This also ties into another important part of sales: building trust and rapport. Remember, people don’t buy products, people buy people.

Say you are selling vacuums. If you jump right in and start selling your vacuum as powerful and having a large capacity, that might not actually matter if your customer has a bad back and wants something that is light and easy to maneuver. In this case, you tried to solve a problem for your customer that was not the right problem. You need the context of what your customer cares about before you can effectively sell, so taking the time to learn about them and their pain points is an essential first step to a successful sale.

Good sales people are actually problem solvers: fitting customers with products that will help them in their business or personal lives.

Business Analyst Problems

Business analysts are masters at analyzing data to generate insights that will inform business decisions. And so while they work with tools like SQL, Python, and Tableau to solve these problems, their skills with those tools don’t mean anything if they aren’t delivering insights that their stakeholders can actually use to inform their decisions.

So in this case, a BA’s goal is to deliver analytical insights, but the problem they are solving is their stakeholder’s problem: What does the stakeholder need to know such that they can make informed business decisions? Ironically, sometimes stakeholders don’t even know the answer to this question. Again, it falls on the shoulders of the BA to push their stakeholder to clearly define their problem by utilizing probing and insightful questions.

BA work is also a perfect example to illustrate the importance of feedback loops. As a BA does their work on analyzing data, they will learn new things and start to get an idea of what information and insights they will be able to provide to their stakeholder. By touching base through the process with the BA, stakeholders can start to get an idea of whether or not the insights are in line with what they are looking for and inform any adjustments that need to be made. By communicating during the problem solving process, the solution will be better aligned with the true goal.

Recruiters Problems

For us recruiters, our goal is to hire awesome people for the company who are not only able to crush their work, but they are also intrinsically motivated and passionate about what they do. But this is not exactly the problem as a recruiter I am trying to solve. My actual problem is best defined as finding what the hiring manager is looking for in the ideal candidate. 

This means I have to work with the hiring manager to clearly define and understand what their ideal candidate looks like. Going back to that idea of proper problem definition sets you up for success, I can tell you with complete confidence that the intake meeting, where the recruiter and hiring manager define the target candidate and interview process, is the single most important step to a successful recruiting process. Without a clear understanding of what the hiring manager is looking for, I cannot effectively source, assess resumes, or interview candidates.

I also need to make sure to have feedback loops. When a candidate I thought looked good is rejected at a later stage in the interview process, it is important that I understand why that candidate was rejected and see if that is something I can sort for earlier on.  

Conclusion

You should now have a clear understanding of the importance and power of understanding the problem before you solve it. Not only that, but how to apply this powerful tool to be more successful in solving your own problems. I consider this a tool that can be applied to any problem and by understanding this, you will find yourself more effectively solving the problems in your life and work. As always, if you have any questions or thoughts, drop me a line and I will endeavor to refine this meta strategy as I develop these ideas.