What Problem Do We Own?
The largest problem that most organizations have is that they don’t know what Problem they have chosen to own or failed to do so. The one customer problem that everything you do is pointed at.
Your customers have a dozen problems. You might be the right answer to two or three. You only get to own one.
why It matters
Most companies answer this question by describing themselves
Ask a leadership team what problem they solve and you usually get a tour of the company. The platform. The proprietary data. The two hundred years of combined experience. The end-to-end solution, a phrase that has never once helped a customer understand anything.
None of that is a problem. It's an inventory.
Customers rarely buy what you build. They buy the progress they are trying to make. And your customers have dozens of problems, most of which you are not the right answer to.
Which is why the question is not what you can solve. Solving is a capability, and most companies have plenty. Owning is a choice, and a choice means giving up the others.
The real problem isn't the problem your customer has. It's the problem your organization chooses to own.
Choosing is the part that gets skipped. Most companies never decide. They accumulate. And a company that solves six problems is telling the market it solves none of them particularly well.
When leadership doesn’t answer it, every team answers it alone
Not out of disloyalty. Out of necessity.
• Product builds toward its own priorities.
• Thought leadership explores whatever is interesting this quarter.
• Marketing tells the story it has the material to tell.
• Sales leads with whatever worked last time, rep by rep.
• Customer success defines success its own way, then reports against it.
Every one of those choices is reasonable from where that person sits. The customer is the only one who sees all five at once, and that is a foundational issues.
the impact
what we do
It works the same way every time.
We start by understanding what is actually happening, not the version in the deck. Then we bring your key people together to answer it in one room, once. Then, if there is work that follows, we name the projects and agree which ones your team takes and which ones I do.
Know: A Check
2 Weeks
Before anybody books a room, I find out what your leadership team actually believes. Separately, so the answers are real rather than negotiated.
Thirty minutes each with five to eight people on your leadership team, separately, asked the same question.
A read of what you already publish: the website, the sales deck, last year’s plan, and the three pieces of thought leadership you are proudest of.
Back to you in writing: the answers side by side, the language each team is actually using, and where they stop matching.
Ninety minutes with your leadership team to walk through it.
For some teams this is the whole engagement. Once you can see the answers side by side, the argument is mostly over.
Fix: A Workshop
Full Day
The day exists to answer one question well enough that every team can work from the same answer afterward. Not to write messaging. That gets easier once this is settled, and almost impossible while it isn't.
What Problem Do We Own? Everyone writes their own answer before anybody speaks. The answers go up on the wall together. The gap between them is the agenda for the rest of the day.
Who We Help: Name one priority customer, not a list. You cannot own a problem without naming whose it is.
Performance, Professional, Personal: The problem underneath, through three lenses. How the organization defines success and what happens if nothing changes. What the person accountable is responsible for delivering, and what makes that harder than it should be.
Why solving it matters to them personally.
Economic, Emotional, Executional:
What it costs if nothing changes. The financial impact, the effect on the people living with it, and what makes the problem difficult to solve in the first place.
Earned or Claimed: Every candidate sorted into what you have proven you can own and what you would simply like to. Two filters run here. Are we describing what we sell or what they are trying to solve. And if we were gone tomorrow, what would they struggle most to replace.
Own It or Leave It: The room writes one sentence. Plus what you are deliberately setting aside, and who says it out loud first.
The morning gets you the decision, with the chart filled in. The afternoon goes into drafting the problem statement and the first version of the language each team will use. Written up within two days.
Based on Project
Whatever you decided in the room is the scope. These are the projects that usually come out of it.
The Problem Statement: The one sentence built out into a short working document. The problem, who has it, what it costs them, and why you are the right answer to it. Everything below works from this one. Two weeks.
Positioning Rebuild: Company positioning and the messaging hierarchy, rewritten from the problem you own rather than from the capability list. Four to six weeks.
The Sales Narrative: The story a rep tells end to end. The discovery questions, the conversation, the deck, and the objections that come with owning this problem instead of a safer one. Four to six weeks.
Thought Leadership Plan: What you should be publishing now that you know what you own. Twelve months mapped, the first three pieces outlined. Thought leadership that leads somewhere rather than following whatever is interesting this quarter. Three to four weeks.
Team Rollout: Getting product, marketing, sales and customer success working from the same answer. The language each one uses, the definitions they share, and the briefing that makes it hold after you leave the room. Four weeks.
Some of it I build with you. Some of it your team is better placed to own, and we agree which is which before anybody starts.
Grow: Projects
A decision, and two things you can hand to people
what you get
on paper
The Problem We Own: The problem you are choosing to own in one sentence, the problems you are deliberately setting aside, and why.
Problem Map: That problem at the performance, professional and personal level, with the language each team uses to talk about it.
What actually changes
Your leadership team can answer the question the same way twice, which sounds small and is not.
Marketing, sales and thought leadership start from the same place instead of negotiating it every quarter.
Saying no gets easier, because there is finally a reason that isn't a preference.
What's your problem?
Forty-five minutes, no fee, nothing to prepare. We work out whether this is your problem or a symptom of one sitting further upstream.
Contact: chad@gtggrowth.com · 312.493.0829