2 key principles are followed

by the best decision-makers

Step 1: Don't solve the wrong problem.
Shane Parrish October 4, 2023

Adapted from Clear Thinking: Turning Ordinary Moments

into Extraordinary Results by Shane Parrish with
permission from Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin
Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House,
LLC copyright © 2023 by Shane Parrish.

The first principle of decision-making is that the decider

needs to define the problem. If you’re not the one making
the decision, you can suggest the problem that needs to
be solved, but you don’t get to define it. Only the person
responsible for the outcome does. The decision-maker
can take input from anywhere — bosses, subordinates,
colleagues, experts, etc. However, the responsibility to get
to the bottom of the problem — to sort fact from opinion
and determine what’s really happening — rests with them.

Defining the problem starts with identifying two things: (1)

what you want to achieve, and (2) what obstacles stand in
the way of getting it.

Unfortunately, people too often end up solving the wrong

problem. Perhaps you can relate to this scenario, which
I’ve seen thousands of times over the years. A decision-
maker assembles a diverse team to solve a critical and
time-sensitive problem. There are ten people in the room
all giving input about what’s happening — each from a
different perspective. Within a few minutes someone
announces what they think the problem is, the room goes
silent for a microsecond… and then everyone starts
discussing possible solutions.

Often the first plausible description of the situation

defines the problem that the team will try to solve. Once
the group comes up with a solution, the decision-maker
feels good. That person then allocates resources toward
the idea and expects the problem to be solved. But it isn’t.
Because the first lens into an issue rarely reveals what the
real problem is, so the real problem doesn’t get solved.

What’s happening here?

The social default prompts us to accept the first definition

people agree on and move forward. Once someone states
a problem, the team shifts into “solution” mode without
considering whether the problem has even been correctly
defined. This is what happens when you put a bunch of
smart, type A people together and tell them to solve a
problem. Most of the time, they end up missing the real
problem and merely addressing a symptom of it. They
react without reasoning.

The social default… encourages us to react instead of reason, in order

to prove we’re adding value.
Many of us have been taught that solving problems is how
we add value. In school, teachers give us problems to
solve, and at work our bosses do the same. We’ve been
taught our whole lives to solve problems. But when it
comes to defining problems, we have less experience.
Things are often uncertain. We seldom have all the
information. Sometimes, there are competing ideas about
what the problem is, competing proposals to solve it, and
then lots of interpersonal friction. So we’re much less
comfortable defining problems than solving them, and the
social default uses that discomfort. It encourages us to
react instead of reason, in order to prove we’re adding
value. Just solve a problem — any problem!

The result: organizations and individuals waste a lot of

time solving the wrong problems. It’s so much easier to
treat the symptoms than find the underlying disease, to
put out fires rather than prevent them, or simply punt
things into the future. The problem with this approach is
that the fires never burn out, they flare up repeatedly. And
when you punt something into the future, the future
eventually arrives. We’re busier than ever at work, but
most of the time what we’re busy doing is putting out fires
— fires that started with a poor initial decision made years
earlier, which should’ve been prevented in the first place.

And because there are so many fires and so many

demands on our time, we tend to focus on just putting out
the flames. Yet as any experienced camper knows, putting
out flames doesn’t put out the fire. Since all our time is
spent running around and putting out the flames, we have
no time to think about today’s problems, which can create
the kindling for tomorrow’s fires.

We’re busier than ever at work, but most of the time what we’re busy
doing is putting out fires — fires that started with a poor initial
decision.

The best decision-makers know that the way we define a

problem shapes everyone’s perspective about it and
determines the solutions. The most critical step in any
decision-making process is to get the problem right. This
part of the process offers invaluable insight. Since you
can’t solve a problem you don’t understand, defining the
problem is a chance to take in lots of relevant information.
Only by talking to the experts, seeking the opinions of
others, hearing their different perspectives, and sorting
out what’s real from what’s not can the decision-maker
understand the real problem.

When you really understand a problem, the solution

seems obvious. These two principles follow the example
of the best decision-makers:

The Definition Principle: Take responsibility for

defining the problem. Don’t let someone define it for
you. Do the work to understand it. Don’t use jargon to
describe or explain it.
The Root Cause Principle: Identify the root cause of
the problem. Don’t be content with simply treating its
symptoms.
I once took over a department where the software would
regularly freeze. Solving the problem required physically
rebooting the server. (The drawback of working in a top-
secret facility was our lack of connectivity to the outside
world.)

Almost every weekend, one of the people on my team

would be called into work to fix the problem. Without fail,
he’d have the system back up and running quickly. The
outage was small, the impact minimal. Problem solved. Or
was it?

At the end of the first month, I received the overtime bill to

sign. Those weekend visits were costing a small fortune.
We were addressing the symptom without solving the
problem. Fixing the real problem required a few weeks of
work, instead of a few minutes on the weekend. No one
wanted to solve the real problem because it was painful.
So we just kept putting out flames and letting the fire
reignite.

A handy tool for identifying the root cause of a problem is

to ask yourself, “What would have to be true for this
problem not to exist in the first place?”