“Life isn’t easy” is a perspective shared by many a mentor, grandparent, advisor, and friend. We all know that to live is to experience challenges. But if you want to grow, make sure the problems you face change over time. If you keep facing the same ones, that’s an indicator you need to find better problems.
Let’s say you have a team member who consistently shows up late for the weekly meeting. Each time she arrives, the meeting flow is interrupted as she shares her flurry of excuses, and everyone has to shift a bit to get back on track. That’s a small problem. And, if you don’t address it, it will keep happening. The better problem would be to explore how you will share feedback with her and coach and mentor timeliness. When you resolve that challenge, you’ll be less likely to face the smaller problem of meeting disruption. See the difference?
Leaders pay attention to patterns. If the team you lead keeps running into the same problem or issue, that’s likely an indicator you need to find a better problem to solve. It’s an invitation to look for the bigger issue at hand. Perhaps your sales performance is lackluster. You can ask the team to increase their outreach, but the better problem might be to elevate their sales skills, improve their ability to truly understand customer needs, or bring a more consultative approach to their sales calls.
Seeking better problems is valuable in our personal lives as well. What’s that one lingering challenge you can’t seem to overcome? Does it connect to your finances, wellness goals, or an important relationship? When you keep encountering the same friction point, here are three steps you can take to identify the better problem:
1. See the truth more clearly. Owning challenges is the fastest way to get started on solving them. With no appetite for denial, name your problem in its most basic form. State it out loud. Write it down. Big or small, just describe it.
2. Elevate the issue. Often, when we believe we’ve clarified our problem, what we really have is named a symptom. For example, if your problem is “I always run out of money before the end of the month,” that’s likely a symptom of a bigger issue of overspending. By examining the problem with an eye for what the bigger issue behind it is, you get to a better problem to solve. And, when you find the path to overcome it, better results follow.
3. Create the plan. Start with understanding the “why” behind your challenge. Something as simple as why you overspend could have lots of complex reasons behind it. Go for quantity with this reflection, considering all the reasons why you keep encountering the same shortfall. When you do that, you’ll have a list of better problems to potentially resolve. Pick the one that’s fully worth solving.
When you solve better problems, you accelerate progress, increase your capability, and grow. That’s leadership.
