336. Great Leaders Find Big Problems First
You must spend the time researching which problems are the right problems, before building solutions that deliver the biggest impact.
Leaders have a bias towards action. They keep their teams moving and on track to meet their goals.
However, this bias can be a determent if you end up working on the wrong things.
When a problem presents itself, a leader's instinct will be to jump right into figuring out the best solution. Before you know it, the team is busy working on solutions but what if you picked the wrong problem?
The goal isn’t to solve every issue your company faces, but the ones that will have the most impact.
…when developing new products, processes, or even businesses, most companies aren’t sufficiently rigorous in defining the problems they’re attempting to solve and articulating why those issues are important. Without that rigor, organizations miss opportunities, waste resources, and end up pursuing innovation initiatives that aren’t aligned with their strategies.
Dwayne Spradlin, The Open Innovation Marketplace: Creating Value in the Challenge Driven Enterprise
Researching multiple problems thoroughly can be time-consuming and may require several testing iterations. However, the effort is worth it as it helps to eliminate non-priority issues and identifies symptoms of a larger problem.
If you can take this time to get not only the root of the issue but also, find the biggest issue, then you can work towards a solution that has a significant impact.
Things are not always as they appear. Often when we solve one problem, we end up unintentionally creating another one that’s even worse. The best way to examine the long-term consequences of our decisions is to use second-order thinking.
It’s often easier to identify when people didn’t adequately consider the second and subsequent order impacts. For example, consider a country that, wanting to inspire regime change in another country, funds and provides weapons to a group of “moderate rebels.” Only it turns out that those moderate rebels will become powerful and then go to war with the sponsoring country for decades. Whoops.
Shane Parrish, Farnam Street
Keep Learning:
Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform
“The ability to think through problems to the second, third, and nth order—or what we will call second-order thinking for short—is a powerful tool that supercharges your thinking.”
Are You Solving the Right Problem?
“Organizations that apply these simple concepts and develop the skills and discipline to ask better questions and define their problems with more rigor can create strategic advantage, unlock truly groundbreaking innovation, and drive better business performance. Asking better questions delivers better results.”
This reminded me of what Kat Cole talks about regarding being biased toward action while listening to those closest to the action. Ties into your thoughts about identifying the right problem. Those closest to the action are going to help the leader understand what's really going on. Great post!
That’s a great from Kat Cole, leaders needs to be biased towards action. I need to search to see if she has done any recent interviews. I heard her speak a few years ago and she had a lot of great advice to share. Thanks for sharing!