What’s your problem?
Too often, we jump to solutions for anything painful, big or small, at work or at home. And that’s because solutions are easy to find and buy. We assume shiny tools or the latest software will fix our inefficiencies… but without truly understanding the problem, why it exists and why it lingers, then any solution we try to incorporate is destined to fall short. Womp, womp.
Now because I’m not qualified to tell anyone what to do in their personal lives, I’m going to migrate over to problem in the workplace, where I’m only slightly more qualified given I’ve been working for 10+ years in roles where my job was to fix problems.
In fast-growing companies there are a lot of problems. Fixing the actual pain point, sharing knowledge around the fix with others, and scaling the solution is a problem in and of itself (which is why I’m writing about it).
But I’ve found an outline that works for me.
(1) Define the problem: What is actual broken, and why? What needs to be true for the problem to go away? A poorly defined problem leads to ineffective & incomplete fixes.
(2) Document the problem, including the process to address and resolve it. Who is involved, why this solution is the right decision, what the process looks like. Writing it down ensures clarity and consistency. I know, I know… I have to write this down? Yes. A process isn’t real until it’s written down—until then, it’s just an idea.
(3) Assign an owner. The owner ensures the process is followed and improved. They’re responsible for the problem not being a problem.
(3) Automate the solution. Automation should scale a strong process, not mask a weak one. This final step works when all others are satisfied.
What’s my problem?
At Lavender, where I support the founders in running the business, we implemented an expensive analytics tool. When I joined, adoption was low because the tool wasn’t delivering the insights we needed. But it turns out the tool wasn’t the problem. The real problem was that our data was inconsistent and incomplete. No analytics tool can function without clean data. Before we could even use the tool, we had to audit and clean up our data.
The same applies to my past work in accounting and FP&A—you can’t build a financial model on top of bad accounting data. Garbage in, garbage out.
Expect problems
Life is full of problems. They’re unavoidable and actually are what makes life worth living… afterall these problems present an opportunity to learn and grow. The next time a problem arises, don’t run for a solution; sit with it and get comfortable with it because by doing so, we’ll better understand it and know how to appropriately address it (and that might just be accepting it).
