The Inclusive Approach To Solving Problems

What’s the first thing you do when you arrive at work? Most of us look at the tasks we have been assigned, see what we need to check off the list and what we should tackle first so that we can move on with the project at hand. We are busy performing and delivering.

To keep track of the overall team performance, most companies operate on a roadmap, journeying through the milestones towards an agreed outcome. Roadmaps are great for execution, getting from point A to point B as efficiently as possible.

But do roadmaps encourage professionals to generate the best solutions possible? That depends on the approach you take.

The exclusive approach

In most roadmaps items are phrased like tasks. For example, "Build a faster car" refers to possible solutions related to cars and excludes all the rest. This task already suggests the desired solution, or at least a part of it.

It also excludes all the people who come from backgrounds outside the Automotive industry, who are not specifically trained for this purpose.

This leaves us with fewer people, with common backgrounds and skillsets, who are given a job to execute. I call this the Exclusive Approach.

Some similar tasks I found on company roadmaps were along the lines of "Add comments to articles" or "Share photos with friends", or "Add a contact form on the website".

This approach narrows down the possibilities and drives people to reuse familiar models. Naturally, we all prefer to execute tasks by repeating what we already know works, no matter your role — marketer, designer, product manager, or engineer .

In the short term, it feels safe and it may even be a rewarding way to progress. But in the long term, it puts us at risk of producing more of the same and our role eventually becoming obsolete.

Inclusive statements

When we want to get more people excited and increase the chances to generate outstanding results we need to reframe tasks as challenges. For example, "we need a faster way to get from point A to point B" opens up a wide range of possibilities, industries, and professions . Robotics and Aviation experts can be easily intrigued and deeply motivated to pursue such a challenge.

I call this the Inclusive Approach and it's designed to engage more brains, increase the possibilities and widen perspectives.

Let me reframe the last examples as challenges. "Add comments to articles" can be reframed as "Drive readers to express their reactions to articles". "Share photos with friends" can be more inclusive when phrased as "A way to share precious moments with loved ones". "Add a contact form in the website" is shifted to "Move customers to get in touch easily".

This approach opens up the possibilities for a wide variety of solutions and drives people to explore new models. Even more importantly it opens the opportunity to learn, and there is no evolution without learning.

We learn when we search, experiment, and try something that might not work. We learn when we confront a task that we do not know how to complete. When we have to solve a problem, improvise, try, and fail — that’s when we learn and feel most motivated.

Current trends in education encourage teachers to give students problems to solve so that they develop techniques of lifelong learning. If you are given a solution to implement, you may be able to execute it, but if you must discover that solution yourself, you learn how to tackle a problem, what works and what doesn’t, and how to do it better next time. Most importantly, you are given a chance to tap into your creative thinking.

Challenges, not tasks

Our roadmaps need to include challenges, not tasks. Solving challenges leads to collaboration, teamwork and innovation. It encourages experimentation and discovery. A roadmap that is based around challenges to be solved rather than tasks to be completed, allows us to explore a range of solutions, experiment, choose the best fit and learn. It allows for a flexible, multi-disciplinary, synergistic approach that can bear fruit in greater efficiency, better communication, and a greater impact on the world.

As eternal students, it is time to enter a mindset where we do not rely on what we already know but are constantly learning, reexamining, and trying. That is the path to creating meaningful work.