The problem of problem-focusing

Two things happened this week that changed my thinking.

First, I was lucky enough to hop on the phone with Andrew Davis, a marketing keynoter and all-around good guy I’ve previously raved about, who shared some lessons learned and feedback for being a professional speaker. One of the things I took away from the conversation was how hard it can be to articulate the problem we’re solving. When I tried to describe my keynote-in-progress to him, here was the exchange:

DREW: What’s the problem you’re trying to solve in a keynote?
ME: I think teams can work on ideas better.
DREW: No, that’s a diagnosis.
ME: OK. My working title is called “creative differences” because people have lost the ability to disagree, productively.
DREW: That’s a symptom of the problem. See what I’m saying?
ME: Yes. Maybe the problem is that people say ‘no’ too easily to new ideas?
DREW: Right. That’s also a symptom. Why are they doing that? THAT’S the problem.

I couldn’t give a good enough answer. Later that same day, I had a quick call with another fellow speaker who is also working on a talk. When I described this exchange to her, she mentioned Gary Keller’s book, The One Thing. The entire premise of the book is about focus, and how that leads to the best results. Good news: even if you haven’t read it, there’s plenty of free tools.

Whenever we create something — written, physical, visual, strategic, even a process  itself — we often think we’ve clearly solved a problem. Instead, our message has too many moving parts. Too many things that are there as window dressing, not the actual window. We end up never actually getting to root causes and missing the singular issue we should be focused on. Symptoms are everywhere. Diagnoses are subjective. Solutions are only as good as the quality of our problem-focusing skills.

I’m going to spend the next week identifying true problems.