Ask This Question Of Every In-flight Project You Have

Hey, Happy Friday.

This week I want to keep it short and sweet and just share with you a simple new reframe for you to reflect on. It’s simple, but damn is it important.

Think back a few years - towards the end of COVID lockdowns *shudder*, Facebook (is anyone calling it Meta yet?) announced Horizon Workrooms.

Don’t remember it? Here’s a quick refresher:

…and yet here we are a few years later and I’m writing this after spending a day on Teams (and one Zoom) meeting. In fact, earlier today we were debating whether Zoom is even getting much use anymore - - when MS Teams achieved ‘good enough’ feature parity along with its integration into the Office suite, it seems the title wave of market share shifted back to it.

After a few laughs about the similarities between the current Zoom/Teams arms race and the classic Betamax/VHS of the 70s/80s, we moved on.

But that’s the point.

'VR’ and Horizons wasn’t even a consideration. Despite being launched by one of the largest tech companies in the world - I haven’t seen or heard anything about it since.

And the reason is fairly easy to stumble across - they were solution focused.

In fact the very end of this interview with Mark Zuckerberg tells us exactly why they built it “We focused on this because we think it’s going to be a big use case for VR” Or, if you read between the lines, ‘I spent $2B buying a VR tech company and so we need to come up with reasons for people to use it’.

It’s a pattern I see plenty of times - starting with the solution then back tracking to find the problem that it solves.

“We need a new case management system”

“Why?”

“We need to be more digital!”

“Ok.. why?"

“Ummm… Let me get back to you”

A Quick Sanity Check For Your Projects

Here’s an alternative - in Marketing there’s this thing called ‘market-orientation’. In short it means “listening to the customer and making decisions accordingly”. Its antithesis is ‘product-orientation’ (which Horizons Workplace is a prime example of).

But today I want to propose a new frame for those of you looking to drive change in your business. Whether that’s new tech / new structures / new processes - whatever - ask yourself:

Am I problem-led, or am I solution-led?

Or to add a few more words to it - are you focused on solving a problem/opportunity, or are you focused on delivering a solution?

There’s a big difference.

See you next week,

BB

I’ll be frank - Your engagement matters

There’s a few ways you can show me that something resonated.

Share. Comment. Like.

It’s a small action, but when it’s 10pm on a Thursday evening and I’m debating whether anyone even reads this thing - it makes a difference. (Plus when you share something with a friend or colleague, it makes you look good too!)

…I’m also (not-so) secretly building a resistance to ‘Big-Framework’ and I’m hoping you’ll join me… ??