How to sell solutions
Selling Solutions vs Solving Problems
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so a lot of the time when we first
interact with people and ask them to
come up with problems that they want to
solve
they often name a solution because they
have a preset idea of the solution and
hence they never really have thought
through to the problem to which this
that was a solution
so I teach dozens and dozens of students
and every year and one of the exercises
we have them do is try and formulate a
solution to a policy problem so we do
the exercise of start by writing down
the problem what is the problem that
you're trying to solve then we do the
exercise of write down one solution to
your problem that's easy they all can
write down one solution to their problem
and then comes the hard part of the
exercise that differentiates whether
you've really just written down a
problem or written down a solution which
is write down three other solutions to
your problem
so then I say okay now write down other
than the solution have written down
write down option a option B and option
C oftentimes they can't do this why
can't they do this they can't do this
because they have essentially drawn to
title link between the problem and the
solution so for instance they'll say
that my problem is that I have a lack of
trained teachers and therefore the
solution is to train teachers and then
if you think well what are the
alternative options to solving my
problem of lacking trained teachers you
realize well there aren't any other
solutions if I have defined my problem
as the lack of trained teachers there
aren't any other solutions
training teachers because I defined my
problem as the lack of my solution which
means I'm really not open to anything
other than business as usual and doing
the mimic thing now if we said wait a
second you really had a deeper problem
hiding somewhere which is you had
inadequate student learning and the
reason you wanted trained teachers was
that you didn't have enough you weren't
getting the student learning you thought
you could get and hence now I've pushed
my problem away from my solution to
where now if I frame the problem as lack
of student learning I can have lots of
different ways of imagining solving this
problem so our rule of thumb is if you
can't imagine at least three alternative
solutions to your problem you don't have
a problem you have formulated a solution
as a problem and if you start from the
formulation of your problem is your lack
of your solution you can never really be
creative enough to start to dig down
deep enough to get to where you can
solve the problem you really have
