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Hello, everyone, welcome to the Five Minutes Podcast. Today, I like to talk to you about Problem Statement. Most of the time when we are working in the project environment, we always start thinking, who will be the team for that project? How will manage our communication? What is the scope if you have a more defined project or how we will approach our solution? How we will manage our interaction, how we will frame our next sprint? For example. But most of the time, we don't stop to think about what is the problem my project is trying to solve? Most of the time we go to our client or our sponsor. We listen. We take note and we leave thinking that one, what I just heard is the only version of the true story, and this is a mistake. You need to understand that the problem statement is an iterative process and why it's iterative? Because of two things you want to understand clearly who are the users, who have a problem that needs to be solved by the problem? For example, if you are Spotify, who is the user, is it the creator, the musician? Is it the user that is listening? Is it the podcaster? Who is the user? And the second, is to avoid jumping towards the solution too early? Most of the time, we don't hear a problem statement. What we hear is a solution statement and we must hear the problem statement. But in order to do that, you need to use an iterative process where you ask questions and refine your problem statement. Most of the time you can use, for example, the five whys that are very common in Six Sigma. You start asking why, why? Why on the top of the why trying to get really deeper on what is the problem?
Let me give you a simple example. Imagine that you work in a school, in a university and you are responsible for the new projects or new developments. And then you meet with the steering committee or the board or the sponsors and you hear this sentence. We need to construct a new building with additional classrooms for the new students. Many times people start running towards we need to identify construction company to build this new building. We need to identify where I will build this new facility. Who will do that? How many rooms? How many floors? Should I use the elevator? We will use access control or it will be open? But stop. What is the problem with this problem statement? You need to understand what is the problem we are trying to solve? First, who are the students? Who are they? And then you go back and you say, please, can you explain to me a little bit more who are the students? Who will benefit from that?
Ok, the students are the normal students. And then you hear: no, there is a strong demand for executive education. Most of these students will be executives coming for two or three-day courses and not for a university degree of four or five years. Second, what is their problem or their problem is that they want something that is convenient for them, that is comfortable, that allows them to interact and learn. With that, they will see the validation that they are investing in the school. When you hear this, what do you think is that when in the first round they said a new building construct a new building. This is not your problem. This is one of the possible solutions. There may be others, for example, you may decide OK in order to solve the problem of giving, I would say this convenience to these specific students in these short term courses. I can, instead of building a new facility, I can build a new online platform in the metaverse, for example, I'm just joking here, but you know you can do that or you can say, no, let's do hybrid classes with several classes online and several on-site. And if I do this with this course, and also if I complement this with all the classes for other students, this hybrid model, I can take one of my classrooms and I can share them between two or three classes.
For example, in the morning someone is using in the afternoon someone is using so I can optimize because it will not be all too. Beans at the same time, and then I don't need to build a new facility. And please, I'm not saying that there is the right solution. I'm just trying to explain to you how important it is for you to understand the problem, because many times you say, OK, that restaurant is a restaurant I'm doing and say, but what do you want? What is the problem? Are you hungry or do you want to celebrate Valentine's Day? There are two very different problems, and when you come to the solution, maybe you can say, No, I don't need to go to a restaurant. I can do a picnic, I can cook at home. I can invite to watch a movie, right? You can do many other things to celebrate Valentine's that is not going to a restaurant. So when you put my problems, I need to find a good restaurant for my Valentine's Day. You are already putting a solution to that. I'm just using this because today is Valentine's Day, but it's just for you to understand that when you have a clear problem statement, you allow people to be creative. You allow people to be disruptive. All disruptions, all innovation, come when people see a problem in a different way and most of the companies, most of us, have our cognitive bias.
I always remember when I was talking to the CEO of Logitech, Bracken Darrell in Hong Kong a couple of years ago. I interviewed him and this video is, by the way, it's already on YouTube. And he said to me, the biggest challenge I have at Logitech is that every time I ask people to come up with ideas to solve problems, you know, projects to solve, they always come up with the solution. And the solution is always a device, a plastic device that will be manufactured and sold. Nobody saw in a different way. Nobody thought that we could do a service, software or that because people are always rooted in what they know. For example, by the school that is very used to build new buildings. When new students come, they will always think that this is the only possible solution. And it's not. And this is why a problem statement is not something that you should do in five minutes and move because if you start with the wrong foot, it's absolutely impossible for you to get to the end result. You may get the end results on time on budget. But most of the time, you will not solve the problem that your user, your client is looking forward to your project.
Think always about that and see you next week with another Five Minutes Podcast.
