Let’s face it.  Leader’s like to solve problems.  As soon as an issue comes up in a meeting, there is often a flurry of ideas generated on how to solve it.   That’s not a bad thing. One of the primary jobs of a leader is to make problems go away. This allows his or her people to stay focused on delivering for the customer and the business.

But sometimes, in their desire to get to a solution, leaders miss the problem.  They speak of it too superficially.  The really don’t understand the issue they are solving.  As a result, while their well-intentioned brainstorms on solutions produce a lot of ideas, they often don’t make much progress.

The key to finding a solution lies in defining the problem.  An old quote attributed to Albert Einstein says, “If I had sixty minutes to save the world, I’d spend fifty-five minutes defining the problem and five minutes solving it.”  Most leaders don’t come close to that level of rigor in defining the problem.  In fact, most don’t go beyond a simple sentence or two that describes the issue at hand.

Unfortunately, businesses tend to operate in a world that values action over thought without realizing that the two are intricately linked.  The fear of spending too much time “admiring the problem” or getting stuck in “analysis paralysis” has caused many leaders to swing one hundred eighty degrees in the opposite direction.  They spend almost no time at all on the problem. 

Problems don’t go away without actions.  But, actions only work if they are solving the right problem.

There is a common misperception that defining a problem requires a lot of time which could be better spent solving it.  That’s not true.  While you do have to put in some time to define a problem, in the grand scheme of things, it is still a small percentage of the time and effort that you will spend on implementing a solution; especially if you have to restart three or four times to get it right.

You can define a problem relatively quickly if you focus and ask the right questions.  The following outline will help you define a problem quickly and clearly.

A)      The problem statement

1)       A characterization of the problem and how it shows up in the organization (supported by     data)

2)       An explanation of why the problem matters and needs resolution (supported by data)

3)       The assumed causes of the problem

B)      Solution definition

1)       The overall outcome that you are looking to achieve in solving the problem

2)       The criteria that will be used to assess the effectiveness of recommended solutions

3)       The constraints to which the solution must adhere (e.g., no increase in headcount or cost, cannot deviate from corporate policies, etc.)

Don’t move forward on solutions until each point on this outline has been discussed, understood, and agreed upon.  The time it takes to get clarity on each of these items will be more than made up for by reduced restarts, rework, and disagreements later on.

Leaders should be driven to act.  However, their actions should be motivated by a clear and accurate understanding of what they are trying to accomplish.