#317 from Innovative Leader Volume 7, Number 1          January 1998

Re-Define the Problem:  You May Get the Answer
by Jack Foster

Mr. Foster is a free-lance advertising writer in Los Angeles (phone 310-277-4881).  He is author of How to Get Ideas (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, San Francisco, 1996).

Since all problems have solutions, it’s critical that you define your problems correctly.  If you don’t, you might solve the wrong problem.

In advertising—the field that I’m familiar with—the statement of the problem is often called a creative work plan or a creative strategy or a mission statement.  It demands answers to questions like, “What are we trying to say and why are we trying to say it?”  “Who are we trying to say it to and why?”  “What can we say that our competition can’t?”  “What’s our product’s or service’s reason for being?”

These plans are essential, for as Norm Brown, the head of an advertising agency, once said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, every road leads there.”  Every field has its own kind of plan that sets forth objectives and missions and strategies—what the problems are, what the opportunities are, what needs to be done.  And “The formulation of a problem,” wrote Einstein, “is often more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skills.  To raise new questions, new problems, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and makes real advances.”

He’s right of course.  For even such a simple question as “How can I do all this work on time?” is vastly different from “How can I get all this work done on time?”  The first question will result in all sorts of labor-saving techniques and shortcuts; the second, in dividing the work load among others. 

It is said that Henry Ford invented the assembly line simply by changing the question from “How do we get the people to the work?” to “How do we get the work to people?”

So take care of what questions you ask, in how you define your problem.  If you’re having trouble solving it or if your solutions seem flat somehow, try defining the problem differently, then solve it. 

Examples

Assume that you’re the police chief in the 1960’s of an oceanside town, a mecca for vacationing college students during spring break.  The business people love the money the students bring in, but many students (mostly males) are getting more and more unruly.  Worse, putting them in jail overnight for being drunk or disorderly isn’t helping.  Indeed it only seems to exacerbate the problem, for jail time is becoming a badge of honor, of respect, of machismo.  If a student hasn’t been in jail he isn’t “in.”

So you decide to get tough.  You put them on bread and water. 

Wrong.  Now the guys who don’t even drink start feigning drunkenness just so they can be arrested and can get out of jail the next day bragging on being fed bread and water.  Suddenly, students (of that particular crowd) who haven’t been in jail are sissies.  You run out of jail space and your staff is working overtime.  The problem is getting out of hand.  You’re in a bind.  You must enforce the law; that’s your job.  But when you enforce it, you make the problem worse.  What do you do?

There are a number of things you could do; there always are.  But when this actually happened to a police chief, this is what he did:  he put the jailed students on baby food.   Instead of treating them like criminals, he treated them like infants.  And almost overnight he turned macho students into laughing stocks.

The chief was a quick learner.  The first time, he asked himself, “How do I more severely punish these students for breaking the law?”  And he put them on bread and water.  When that didn’t work, he asked himself, “How do I embarrass these students for breaking the law?”  And bingo!

Many times it’s like that.  You simply rephrase the problem and bingo—all sorts of different solutions appear.

Business people ask the wrong questions all the time.  Often, these questions are based on assumptions so deep-seated they don’t even know they’re making them.

I once worked for a company that operated hundreds of donut stores.  Over the years, sales were gradually going down and they asked me to come up with some ideas on how to increase traffic; on how, in other words, to get more customers into the stores.

“Why not try to get your existing customers to buy more donuts?” I asked.  “Because our sales figures show that we’re getting fewer customers every year, not that our customers are buying fewer donuts.”

We discussed a number of ways we could attract more customers, including adding muffins and scones and sweet rolls to the menu, couponing the neighborhoods surrounding the stores, offering special prices at slow hours, offering free coffee with every order, coming up with new advertising, directing our advertising at teens, at women, at office workers, and so forth.

Then I made a suggestion that startled them:  “If you want more customers, you might want to reconsider the question.”  “Right now you’re asking, ‘How do I get more customers to come to us?’”  But if you asked, ‘How do I get more customers, period?’ or simply ‘How do I sell more donuts?’ your whole marketing approach might change.”

If you asked either of those questions, you might eventually stop thinking of your stores as retail outlets and start thinking of them as individual manufacturing plants. 

And if they were donut manufacturing plants, your stores would sell donuts retail just like they’re doing now; but in addition, they’d probably hire salesmen to go out into their marketing areas and drum up more business.  The salesmen could sell to office buildings, schools, apartment buildings, construction sites, malls, and factories, from wherever.  Maybe you could even get some donut trucks driving around selling coffee and donuts in the morning.”

But I had lost them.  I think all they saw was the work and risk involved, and so the idea was never tried.  But it shows how a simple change in the question can revolutionize your thinking.

Different Questions

So if you’re bogged down, try asking a different question.  If you’ve been asking, “How can we make the production line more efficient?” try asking “How can we make the production line less inefficient?”  Or “How can we change the production line so that the workers will enjoy their work more?”

If you’ve been asking, “Why aren’t people buying my product?” try asking “Why are people buying my product?”  Or “Why aren’t people who do buy my product buying it more often?”  Or “Why aren’t people who do buy my product buying more of it?”  Or “Why are people buying my competitor’s product?”  Or “How else can my product help people?”

If you’ve been asking, “How do I save more money?” try asking “How do I spend less money?” Or “How can I get more money?”  Or “How can I get more with the money I do spend?” 

If you’ve been asking, “How do I get the salesmen to make more calls?” try asking “How do I get them to make fewer, but more qualified, calls?” Or “How do I get them to convert more of the calls they do make?”  Or “How do I get them to call on more prospects at the same time?”  Or “How can I get the prospects to call on my salesmen?”  Or “How do I make it unnecessary for my salesmen to call on customers?”

Different questions, different answers, different solutions.