How being fixated on a problem, not the solution, may work

Plus becoming a power user and understanding the nature of trust

Hi friends! 👋👋

Welcome to Issue #45 of Curiosity > Certainty!

Have a strong opinion about what problems you’re trying to solve, be loose about how you’re going to solve them.

This is something I’ve learned over the past year.

The first version of your non-obvious idea on how to solve a problem that most others miss is usually wrong. So you launch something, talk to users, and edit. After several such iteration cycles, you land on a solution (a product, a service) that fits just right in the market. Even though the process of inching closer to the right solution is painful, it is your flexibility about your choice of solution that gets you there. 

But if you are fixated on how you’re going to solve a problem you’re likely to close yourself to a range of options too early. That’ll make things harder for you even though it may feel less painful. You’ll have to be really lucky or really good in the way you execute to succeed. Success is either outside your control or a tall ask.  

More likely, you’ll not see success. So you’ll move away from your original problem, try and solve easier problems instead that many more are attempting to solve. This may happen without you realizing. This is trouble because now your users will see on your door the same name plate they see on others. Why should they choose you over the many others? You have to start from scratch all over again. Most don’t realize this.

I say this not by dint of having successfully overcome these challenges but as someone grappling with them as part of my own journey.

Last year, I started writing long-form essays on Medium. The topics varied from mental models to organizational behavior to leadership to product management to decision-making. I started this newsletter subsequently and continued in the same vein. I was sure I wanted to only write.  

I was clear on the solution (writing) and loose on the problem (decision-making or product or leadership). Then a couple of mentors suggested to me to narrow down the problem. They asked me to identify myself with one thing first. I picked decision-making. And I realized that to be able to deeply explore the topic (and solve the problem for knowledge workers like me who wanted to become better at decision-making), I had to explore ways of articulating myself. Ways in which my audience found it easier to understand the meat-and-potatoes concepts. So I started writing short-form content (LinkedIn posts) and I started a couple of thematic series. This allowed me to break down individual concepts. Soon, I realized that presenting something visual helped with ‘the recall value. I started sketching. After speaking with people who followed my content, I realized short videos (here, here, and here) provide another way of reaching my audience (lower cognitive load, more immersive, fun). 

I haven’t cracked it yet. In fact, I don’t believe there’s any one consistently working solution. But I do believe that I would rather be flexible about how I solve a problem than what problem to solve.

Trust is a path-dependent property

You’re at a startup. Things are picking up, business is showing signs of viral growth, and the company’s on a hiring spree. Now place yourself in two scenarios.

In the first, you’re one of the earliest employees. You enjoy autonomy to take decisions. In the second, you’ve just moved to the startup from a bigger company where there was more emphasis on process and approval. 

Even though you’re in the exact same position, you may feel tied down in the first case and trusted in the second. Why? Because trust is a path-dependent property.

As an early employee, you’re used to high levels of trust in you. But then things change with scale. You may equate being questioned as being doubted. There still is enough trust but it’s less than what was there before.

As someone moving from a bigger setup, you’re used to following protocol. You’re used to making 50-slide presentations to get buy-in. Now you get that over a cup of coffee. Suddenly, your judgment feels valued, you feel trusted. 

What may have happened? Two things.

One, we tend to emphasize the direction of movement of trust over the absolute value of trust. 

Trust is predictability. When you trust someone you’re making a bet that they’re going to behave in a way you can predict. When an experience erodes trust, you predicted wrong. The next time you want to make sure you don’t fall short. 

When an experience builds trust, you predict wrong too. Now you want to recalibrate upward. You expect a bit more now, but not a whole lot because you don’t want to fall short. 

What you hate the most is falling short. That’s lesson #2. You hate falling short of your expectations much more (twice as much) than you love exceeding them. You read more into an experience that erodes trust than an experience that builds trust by the same amount. 

Management that doesn’t understand this will be surprised by lagging indicators such as feedback, happiness ratings, and attrition. 

Daniel Ek, CEO of Spotify, mentions that his attempts to run weekly product review meetings fell flat when his head of product pulled him aside after one such meeting to tell him that no one from the team enjoyed the meetings. He went on to add that he didn’t think Daniel added anything to the meetings. As much as this rattled Daniel, he tested the hypothesis by taking himself out. The team did just fine without him.

Daniel could have stayed on and reassured the team it wasn’t his intention to micromanage or that he only wanted to make sure they moved in the right direction, but it would not have worked as well as respecting the feedback he received.

Communication is important. But actions have the farthest reach across time (quarters) and space (rank).

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What has been your experience with trust? I would love to know about it.

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Using mental models like keyboard shortcuts 

What is so special about how developers use computers? Version control instead of those ridiculously named attachments, command line interface instead of regular GUI, and keyboard shortcuts, of course. 

We all aspire to be power users of the software we use most often. It is frustrating to not be able to do what we want to at anything less than full capacity. A keyboard shortcut pushes us closer to our goal with minimum input. Mental models are no different. They allow us to make decisions while burning minimum mental calories. 

Take your favorite keyboard shortcut. Say that’s c on Gmail. Hit it and a window opens for composing a new message. What could be its equal in decision-making? Maybe the mental model of inversion? When faced with a decision, ask first: ‘What’s the worst outcome and how do I avoid it?’ See how it narrows things down and brings clarity. 

Some of you may say, ‘I don’t like frameworks or mental models. I trust my gut.’ And you should. But soon you’ll run into situations your gut will have no reference points for. And you’ll struggle, just like you do with legacy payroll software your company uses. 

Now reframe your notion of mental models a touch. Think of them not as extra luggage you’ve to carry, but a toolkit that you can unpack anywhere, anytime. Suddenly, decision-making and mental models are a productivity hack. 

You could for what it’s worth make the right decision every time if you had unlimited time, attention, information, energy. But you don’t. Nobody does. So the more you can save your mental juice for the big, hairy decisions, the better off you are. 

The digital natives, the mobile-first generation, those whose jaws drop when you say the phrase directory structure–those zoomers will demand and build next-generation software that will read minds. Without it it will be impossible for them to function. There’ll just be so many things to do that they’ll all have to be power users.  

Much the same way, knowledge workers like you and me will have more information, less time, higher stakes, more decisions. We can deal with all this as normal users and burn ourselves out. Or we can learn to be power users and make the most of what is possible. By learning how to make better decisions faster.

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That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading!

Let me know what you made of this issue. Spread some ❤ by sharing it with a friend or two.

Until next week…