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.
Owning a problem provides clarity, focus and most importantly XXXXX
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.
what it costs you
what we do
Half a day, the right eight people, one question
This is not a messaging session. Nobody writes a tagline.
We are working out what is true before anyone decides how to say it.
We separate what your customer is actually trying to achieve from what you have been selling against, then look at the problem through three lenses at once, because a decision is never made by an organization. It is made by a person inside one.
Performance
What is the customer trying to achieve, and what happens if nothing changes?
Professional
What is the person accountable for delivering, and what is making that harder than it should be?
Then we separate the problems you have earned the right to own from the ones you would simply like to claim, and we force the choice. That last part is where the discomfort lives, and it is the only part that changes anything.
The first answer is rarely the real answer. Surface answers are easy. The real one takes curiosity and a bit of nerve, because naming it usually means admitting somebody has been solving the wrong thing for a while.
In the room
Five Answers
Everyone writes their answer to the question before anyone is allowed to speak. The gap is the agenda.
Earned or Claimed
Every candidate problem gets sorted into ones you have proven you can own and the ones you would just like to.
Personal
Why does solving it matter to them as a human being? Recognition, risk, relief, or getting a weekend back?
Performance, Professiona, Personal
The same problem seen by the organization, by the person accountable, and by the human making the call.
OwN it or leave it
The forcing exercise. What you are keeping, what you are letting go, and who says it out loud first.
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.
How deep do we go
Everything starts with knowing first
Know
A Check
Two weeks
When you suspect the answers do not match but nobody has said it out loud. I find out what each team believes and put the gaps in writing.
Fix
A Workshop
Half a day, or a full day
When you are ready to choose. The room decides which problem you own, and the arguing mostly stops after that. Half a day gets the decision. A full day and the afternoon goes into building what you decided.
Grow
An Engagement
Six to eight weeks
When you are ready to choose. The room decides which problem you own, and the arguing mostly stops after that. Half a day gets the decision. A full day and the afternoon goes into building what you decided.
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