Finding the Gap

One of the biggest shifts that happens when people step into leadership roles is that you are not only expected to identify the solutions, you have to figure out how to ask the right questions. If the last four years taught any business leader anything, it's that new challenges and questions pop up daily, ones you never expected to have to ask, let alone answer. Am I essential? Do people need to come into the office to work? What if the supply chain implodes but demand remains? You know, easy questions.

There are no shortage of opportunities or problems for any business to solve, and often times the hardest part is settling on one or two major areas of focus. It's harder than it looks, but when everything is a priority, than nothing is.

Forbes did an article on the 11 ways business leaders need to identify priorities, but we are going to focus on one: Focusing on the Gap or as stated in this article Consider What Priorities Impact the Most People.

The larger the challenge, the more potential that a solution could have mass appeal. Easier said than done. The key is to blend what you know and what you believe with what you can find and demonstrate. Finding ideas or what's not working is often considered easy, but it's taking those ideas and doing something with it that's the challenge. With thousands of directions your business or team could go, how do you decide which one is the most critical?

I've created a process that I use when trying to understand the question and potential solution to a problem that blends intuition and analytics to get to potential resolutions and results.

Z - A - P - P - E - D

Finding the Gap & Creating a Solution

Z - Zone In on the Problem

The largest challenge is always to find the right problem. Sounds obvious, right? But often organizations spend hours and millions of dollars solving the wrong problem and when the competitor down the street solves the right one, it seems so obvious. Start with observations. Watch how your customers or audience does things today. Where do they struggle? Where do they have work-arounds to solve a problem because they feel one doesn't exist? Then ask questions. Ask them beyond the obvious "what do you wish was better" to questions around other experiences they've had, things they've asked for but never received resolution, or ask the Five Why's to drill down on each statement to the root problem. Ask them where they go to try and resolve their issue and what they found in other industries they love. You'll want to verify this across multiple audiences to see if the challenges are similar or isolated. What you may discover is that you believe you have a problem in one area, but in reality the problem is deeper or simplier. If you sell a product, you may believe you're missing a feature, but when you dive into it, the actual issue is that the customers aren't using the features you have because it's not intuitive and so additional features aren't driving additional buying behaviors.

A - Articulate the Problem

The next piece is to clearly articulate what the problem is so everyone on the team or in the organization can understand it. I remember when I was writing screenplays, there was a cardinal rule that stated if you couldn't clearly articlulate your movie in one simple sentence, you didn't understand what you were writing about or have a good script. They were called loglines and every writer spends time there, often as much as other pieces of their writing, to ensure their story is clear and understandable. Loglines have 4 key parts: main character, set up, main conflict, main antagonist. Stated another way, Who is my hero? What do they want? Who or what is against them? What is vital for them to achieve a goal? Your business problem should be similar. Customer - Situation - Conflict or Issue - Result. Your hero is your customer, but clearly defined and narrow in scope. They want an experience, product or service that doesn't exist today. Against them may be other products, norms, standards, rules, or education around what's available. And to achieve their goal they need something that resolves their issue.

Here's the logline for Titanic: A seventeen-year-old aristocrat falls in love with a kind but poor artist aboard the luxurious, ill-fated R.M.S. Titanic. Or what about The Hangover (one of my all time favorite movies): After a bachelor party in Las Vegas, three friends with no memory of the previous night wake up to find the bachelor missing, consequently seeking to find their friend before his wedding.

I'm not telling you the whole movie (or problem) but what is happening that my solution will address. Could you make your problem statement this clear, descriptive and accurate?

P - Propose Resolution Options

This is where if you're a brainstormer you get to have some fun. How could you solve their problem? What are the options that exist or should exist to address this challenge your customer is having? The best part of this is you get to question everything to find a resolution that might be new and innovative. Can I run a hotel without actually owning any properties or hiring staff? Sure AirBnB. How would I put 10,000 songs in a single device I could carry around in my pocket? Introducing the iPod. Why do I have to wait each week for the new show to come out instead of watching it when I want? Hi Netflix. How do I have a radio show where I talk about things that interest me without a recording studio? Anyone heard of podcasts? When you find your problem, the key to finding resolutions is to think of as many "knowns" in the experience today and challenge them. Ask questions and ensure whatever solutions you have are actually addressing that challenge.

Think about your industry and see if you can come up with things that have always been done a certain way and ask yourself if they need to stay that way. I bet if you practice doing this on a regular basis you will get good and finding new resolutions or ideas to create innovation.

P - Prioritize and Plan

Now that you have a thousand things and more ideas than you know what to do with, you have to prioritize the options to get to a solution. What is your criteria going to be? Most innovative? Most cost effective? Easiest to market? Hard to duplicate? Can we do this today? It's important to create a prioritization matrix or chart to use in order to evaluate all your priorities of what you could do to find the ones you should do. You may find that it's not a single solution, but a grouping of ideas together that provide you with the best option.

Once you've identified the way you're going to solve your customer's problem, you have to create a plan to implement. You have to figure out how you are going to do it. Do you have capabilities today, or do you have to get them? Is your talent capable of implementing this, or does it need to look different? What are the steps you will use along the way to ensure you take your idea to a solution? Who is going to lead your project and do they know what's required to achieve success? The planning stage, like any battle plan, doesn't need to be set in stone, but probably written in pen with the roadmap and milestones to make it happen.

E - Execute Your Plan

Now that you've figured out the problem, identified and prioritized your solution, and created a plan to get it done, now you get to go to work. Moving through the process to not lose sight of the original challenge is often the hardest part. Balancing requirements with realities, challenges with choices is the role of the leader to ensure that the solution that comes out is actually addressing this issue. This is hard because often times what you're trying to do doesn't exist and the process to create it isn't a straight line. But holding firm on must have items versus like to have items and knowing who is the point person to make a decision when the team is stuck is critical. By knowing your customer and their problem, you become the voice of them in the room, not losing sight of what you are trying to create. These situations arise all the time. What if the team tells you that it will take an extra 2 months to create a feature that you believe is required but it will move out the schedule. What would you do? Now imagine a thousand of these and you have a development process.

D - Distribute Your Solution

Taking your solution to market can be one of the most fun pieces of a launch. Like a new baby that you've been thinking about, talking about, planning for these past several months, it's now ready to burst out into the world. The way you tell the story from start to finish, and connect with customers is critical at this stage to connect with your audience. It may be something so simple that solves a huge issue that they are instant fans. Other times, the solution requires more thoughfulness and intention, and therefore more personalization or an explanation. Having the right team and the story from start to finish puts you in the driver's seat with current and potential customers to change their environment and how the interact with your company, creating loyal customers.

When you get into leadership positions and depending on the size of your company, there will be people to implement your ideas and direction. But as a leader, your job is to make sure you are asking the right questions and observing your customers' experiences, ensuring the things you are focused on are the right ones. By ensuring that the questions are the right ones and digging deep into your customers' challenges, you can come up with innovative solutions that connect with your audience, creating distant observers into raving fans.

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