TJL #75: Solve the right problem (Daily productivity #50)

From: What's Your Problem?

Feb 07, 2021

Today’s tip: solve the right problem.

We waste a lot of time problem-solving. How much time is wasted by saving the wrong problem?

Story

The story that I want to share with you today comes from the book What’s Your Problem. It really shows the power of reframing.

You are the owner of an office building, and your tenants are complaining about the elevator. It’s old and slow, and they have to wait a lot. Several tenants are threatening to break their leases if you don’t fix the problem.
First of all, notice how this problem isn’t presented to you neutrally. Like most of the problems we encounter in the real world, someone has already framed it for you: the problem is that the elevator is slow.
In our eagerness to find a solution, many of us don’t notice how the problem is framed; we take it for granted. As a result, we start coming up with ideas for how to make the elevator faster: Could we upgrade the motor? Could we improve the algorithm? Do we need to install a new elevator?
These ideas fall into a solution space, that is, a cluster of solutions that share assumptions about what the problem is:

These solutions might work. However, if you pose this problem to building managers, they suggest a much more elegant solution: put up mirrors next to the elevator.* This simple measure has proved effective in reducing complaints, because people tend to lose track of time when given something utterly fascinating to look at—namely themselves.
The mirror solution doesn’t solve the stated problem: it doesn’t make the elevator faster. Instead it proposes a different understanding—that is, it reframes the problem:

This is what reframing is about. At the heart of the method is a counterintuitive insight: sometimes, to solve a hard problem, you have to stop looking for solutions to it. Instead, you must turn your attention to the problem itself—not just to analyze it, but to shift the way you frame it.

Moral of the story

The moral of the story is this: The way you frame the problem determines which solutions you come up with. What this means is that by changing the way you see the problem (reframing the problem) you can some up with different — and often better solutions.

Previous TJLs

Read my previous TJLs by following on the links down below:

Today Jan Learned

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