Solving the wrong problem, really well

Solving a problem != making things better.

Business units naturally focus on the challenges in front of them. That’s understandable. They have their own responsibilities, priorities and pressures, and the problems they’re trying to solve are often entirely legitimate.

But those problems don’t necessarily exist in isolation.

A change in isolation may introduce complexity elsewhere. A process that improves one department’s efficiency might make the overall experience worse.

We can build systems, automate processes and deliver technically brilliant solutions to precisely what’s been requested, without ever questioning if we should.

Sometimes the answer is still to build the solution. Sometimes it’s to change the process. And sometimes the most valuable thing we can do is ask - Why?

Increasingly, I’ve found myself stepping back from the immediate request and asking different questions. What are we trying to achieve? Why does this problem exist? How does this fit into the bigger picture? What does the end user experience look like from beginning to end?

I’ve come to appreciate that the real value isn’t always in the clever solution itself, but in understanding whether we’re solving the right problem in the first place.