A Structured Approach to Problem Solving | MIT Sloan on Business Strategy

Formulating precise problem statements is the foundational skill for implementing dynamic work design and shifting the brain from automatic to conscious processing. While the automatic system relies on past experiences, a well-crafted problem statement forces high-powered, conscious thinking to unlock innovative solutions. Organizations frequently fail by skipping this step entirely, assuming team cohesion that rarely exists across different departments like marketing and finance. Another common pitfall involves masking a preferred solution as a problem statement rather than identifying the actual issue. Furthermore, vague goals such as "improving morale" lead to unfocused, wasteful activity. Effective organizational improvement requires peeling apart problems from proposed solutions and maintaining extreme precision to catalyze a sequence of focused, high-impact projects.