Are you solving a problem? Most teams spend their meetings talking around a problem instead of naming it. They describe what hurts, what’s late and what’s missing (those are symptoms). Then they leave the room and nothing changes.

I see it all the time. Smart, capable professionals can talk for an hour about an issue and never once say what it is.

So here’s a question I want you to start asking, out loud and often: What’s the problem?

Symptoms are not the problem

A symptom is what you see or hear or feel. The problem is what’s causing those symptoms. In a lot of organizations, people discuss what’s showing up downstream and never look upstream. They treat symptoms, not the problem.

Think about how much energy goes into fixing things, solving things and addressing things. But why? What’s the issue? What’s the real challenge?

The clearer you get on that, the more impactful your message will be and the more meaningful the execution.

Two leaders who named it

Steve Jobs launched the iPhone talking about a problem, not a product. He described existing smartphones as “not so smart” and “not so easy to use.” That’s it. One clear statement of the problem. From there he could explain what Apple was going to do about it.

Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) confronts the scouts in “Moneyball.”

The second example is from the movie Moneyball. Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A’s, calls a meeting with his scouts after the team loses three key players. Beane keeps asking, “What’s the problem?” Every answer he gets is a symptom. They need home runs. They need RBIs. They need to fill the lineup. Then he identifies the actual problem: There are rich teams and there are poor teams, and the A’s are the poorest poor team. “It’s an unfair game.” If the A’s think like the Yankees, they’ll lose to the Yankees. So they rethink how to identify underrated players they can afford to hire, and they turn it around.

In both cases, the breakthrough started with someone stating the problem clearly.

Three ways to get to the problem

1. Take more time alone to think. A client who led innovation at a Fortune 500 company told me, “My team’s answers aren’t good enough.” He was quick to add that it wasn’t because they weren’t smart enough. They just weren’t thinking about a problem long enough. This is one of the reasons I wrote Quiet Works: Making Silence the Secret Ingredient of the Workday. If you’re only skimming the surface, you’ll want to solve for the symptoms. You need quiet time to think and identify the problem (or the root cause).

2. Treat critical thinking like a muscle. It’s a discipline, and it can atrophy. Ask yourself difficult questions. Is this a symptom or a cause? Is it downstream or upstream? Am I letting noise into my day and peeling off to do something easier? These are hard things to solve, and they deserve your full attention.

3. Use a simple tool. We created a mind map called the Quiet Worksheet. You start by stating the issue, then work through five prompts that spell WORKS:

  • Why is this an issue?
  • What Outcome are you looking for?
  • How would you Reframe it? Try an analogy or a different way of looking at it.
  • What are the Key details as you drill down?
  • What Solution or support do you need?

Take the Oakland A’s. The issue is the financial model for recruiting players. Why does it matter? If they keep recruiting the same way, they keep losing. The outcome? A redesigned recruiting practice. Now that’s solving a problem.

Download the Quiet Worksheet and try it on an issue of your own.

Solving the problem

When you go back upstream, you stop talking about symptoms and start solving the real problem.

Try it in your next meeting. Before anyone proposes a fix, ask, “What’s the problem?” If the answer is a symptom, ask again.

And if you’ve heard all of this, tried a new approach and it still doesn’t work? Now that’s a problem.

Adapted from the Just Saying podcast, Ep. 404, “What’s the problem?” Listen to the full episode.