It’s very easy – and very tempting – to see a problem, and go "Right, I know how to fix that, let me at it".
But in many cases, that’s the wrong approach. Very often, it’s much more useful to first ‘fall in love with the problem’.
To spend time with it, give it attention – BEFORE you start looking for solutions.
Because if you don’t, how can you be certain that you’ve chosen the right solution?
How do you know you’re not inadvertently stealing somebody else’s power, by solving a problem that they ought to be solving, with or without your help?
Or, how will you know that your solution will be accepted or even appreciated by others? If you’ve ever had people resist or reject your good ideas or help, you've experienced the downside of jumping into solution-mode.
Equally, fast-tracking a solution is very often a terrific way to work on solving low-quality problems, and stifle growth.
For instance: if you’re the business owner, and you’re good at selling and the problem is ‘not hitting our targets’, it can be tempting to jump in and help your sales team.
Except if you do that, you’re solving a problem that you can hire for… and, you’re doing it with your own time. Which, if you spend that time on the solving the high-quality problem called ‘Our sales process needs a strategic overhaul’, will give you a lot more bang for your buck.
The owner putting their head together with the team and directors, in order to improve sales across the whole team, that gets you far more leverage than driving more sales yourself.
So whenever you’re triggered to jump in and solve things, take a moment to look at the problem, stay with it longer, try to reframe it, see if from different angles first – fall in love with the problem.
You’ll either discover that the problem isn’t the highest-quality problem for you to solve, or you’ll find a better and more leveraged way to solve the problem, or you’ll find the meta-problem behind the problem you just fell in love with.