Sticky problems call for sticky solutions

At some point in your life you’ve probably had gum stuck in your hair and your first thought might have been, “Where are the scissors?” If you went through with that unplanned haircut, you know firsthand that it probably wasn’t the best solution. Peanut butter, of all things, is the sticky solution to your sticky problem.

Sometimes when the fit hits the shan, before that first glass of a?ejo I try to think of a metaphor to help me reframe my challenge. Lately, the topic of product development has been waking me up early. The same thing that makes product builds exciting is also what makes them grueling; you are always running the gauntlet toward the unknown. Your resolve is tested at every checkpoint and it’s tempting to frantically run around looking for those scissors.

Here are three ways to help you grab the peanut butter instead of the scissors to get through a sticky situation.

1) Lower your expectations for perfection

Don’t hope for or expect easy answers to solve complicated problems. Sure, it’s brilliant when it happens, but more often than not you will find there are no perfect answers. There is only an array of good-but-not-great solutions that you will need to weigh before you can move to the next challenge. Expect hurdles and build in extra time to resolve them.

During a recent product build, paralysis set in while trying to decide if the product should be built natively on a CRM platform or agnostically so it could scale across enterprise systems. For every good reason to choose one direction over the other, there was an equally bad reason. We ultimately took the more difficult path forward, sacrificing time and budget now (not perfect) to gain long term scale and impact.

2) Safeguard your energy

If time is your most precious resource, then your energy is its currency. When a hairy challenge puts you on tilt, your knee-jerk response might be to run around the office freaking out everyone in your path. This will only exhaust yourself, turn people off and deflate your team. Preserve your energy, take a moment, pause and find a quiet place to think through your next move.

Recently a product went out the door that missed a step of the approval process. It was live for less than 30 minutes before it was escalated to what-seemed-like every person in the organization. The clock was ticking and without a peep of blame or a whimper of ‘why,’ the team morphed into a flash mob and used their collective synchronized energy to defuse this bomb.

3) Surround yourself with people you trust

When you are at your wits end, who do you turn to? Tackling difficult challenges requires different points of view and expertise. If you think you can go at it alone, it will end poorly because you’re only seeing what you want to see. Surround yourself with people that have the skills, experience, attitudes and empathy to talk you down, provide radical candor and help you find a solution.

My ambition to productize a point-of-sale system clouded my judgement because I rationalized away logic. During a fit of determination a friendly stepped in and said, “This is like pushing a wet noodle up a hill.” While that wasn’t what I wanted to hear, it made me realize this was not the hill I wanted to die on. If you surround yourself with “yes people,” you better make the right call 100% of the time. But if you’re like most people, it’s critical to surround yourself with trusted co-workers who can speak openly and candidly, even if that means telling you you’re wrong. Those are the people who can stop a bad decision from snowballing and becoming a monster problem.

The path to the best solution is littered with sticky challenges. But if you pause, resist the urge to make rash decisions, and reframe the way you look at them, those sticky problems are really just opportunities waiting to be solved. Expect the solution will be worth the process to get there, don’t squander your energy and have an arsenal of trusted teammates to tag in. Yes, sticky problems are everywhere, but overcoming them is exactly what makes success that more meaningful.

This is a very aspirational article as I successfully follow this advice about 70% of the time.

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