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Tag: Solving Problems

  • When Everything Feels Broken in Business, Here’s What to Tackle First | Entrepreneur

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    When everything feels broken in your business, deciding what to fix first can be paralyzing. I’ve been there — looking at multiple problems, all urgent, wondering where to begin.

    After 25 years of navigating these decisions and watching other entrepreneurs struggle, I’ve learned there’s a hierarchy to fixing business problems. Understanding this hierarchy can mean the difference between thriving and barely surviving.

    Revenue comes first

    Here’s the reality entrepreneurs don’t want to hear: sales need fixing first. Mike Michalowicz covers this in his book “Fix This Next.” The majority of businesses have decent products and people, but they’re not selling effectively. This truth became even more stark during the pandemic. McKinsey found that 70-80% of small businesses experienced 30-50% revenue drops between 2020 and 2021.

    This applies whether you’re funded or bootstrapping. If you’re a funded startup building a product that won’t launch for two years, you have the luxury of focusing on product development first. But for service businesses, bootstrapped companies or any business that needs revenue to survive, sales must be the priority.

    Think about it: if sales aren’t working, nothing else matters. It doesn’t matter how efficient your operations are or how talented your team is if you’re running out of money. When profitability is negative and growth is stagnant or declining, you must fix sales. Without revenue, the company dies.

    Understanding your business stage

    I’ve developed a framework called “leap, grow, scale” that helps identify what to fix based on where you are in your journey.

    First, you make the leap — you start your business, jumping into the void without knowing how it will go. At this stage, you need to generate enough revenue to survive and hire your first person.

    Then comes the growth stage. You’ve found something that works, and now you’re adding people. The key is finding a formula that multiplies value — every person you add should generate more revenue than they cost. While 1.25x might be the minimum to stay viable, the real opportunity is finding ways to 2x or 3x your revenue with each strategic hire. That’s the difference between linear growth and exponential growth.

    Finally, there’s the scale stage. You’ve found a working machine, and now you need to operate it at larger volumes.

    At every single stage, revenue remains critical. But once revenue is stable, other problems emerge.

    When revenue isn’t the problem

    Let’s say your revenue is okay — you’re making enough to cover expenses with a bit left over. There’s no immediate panic about making rent. What’s next?

    The answer is almost always people. When I look back at my own plateaus, people problems were the culprit. This challenge never goes away. Everyone struggles with it.

    The Peter Principle captures one common problem: employees get promoted to their highest level of incompetence. Here’s how it played out in my business: we’d grow, need managers, so we’d promote good individual contributors. They’d do okay as managers, we’d promote them to directors — and that’s where they’d hit their ceiling.

    Now you’re stuck. You can’t promote them, demoting feels wrong, and moving them sideways might not work. I ended up with people who weren’t right. Worse, when talented new recruits joined, the misplaced managers drove them away. I realized I had the wrong people when it was too late.

    Related: How to Turn Your ‘Marketable Passion’ Into Income After Retirement

    The third priority: Operational efficiency

    Once you have good revenue and the right people, operational efficiency becomes your focus. How quickly can you deliver your product or service?

    For example, if orders take seven days to ship, can you reduce it to four? If customer onboarding takes 30 days, can you cut it to 15? If you can onboard customers in half the time with the same team, you’ve doubled your capacity. If you previously onboarded 24 customers annually, now you can handle 48. That translates to revenue growth.

    According to McKinsey research, CEOs report that operational improvements through digital transformation can yield 40% efficiency gains, 36% faster time-to-market and 35% enhanced customer satisfaction. These aren’t marginal improvements — they’re game-changers.

    Recognizing the warning signs

    How do you know when it’s time to act? Sometimes the market tells you — loudly. A customer might refuse to pay because something that should have taken one month took three. Or you consistently miss your financial targets. These force you to confront reality.

    In my case, we kept missing product goals and financial targets. Then we started going backward. That forced us to acknowledge problems that needed immediate attention. The forcing functions are always profitability and cash reserves. If you’re profitable, you’re building reserves. If not, you’re draining them. Eventually, you run out of runway.

    The continuous improvement mindset

    Here’s the truth: there’s always something to fix in your business. It’s just a matter of degree and urgency. Running out of money is obviously more critical than a minor reliability issue in your product.

    Sometimes problems arise from strategic mistakes. We made a strategic error in 2023 that impacted sales. Now we’re fixing those decisions to restore revenue growth.

    The key is being proactive rather than reactive. Don’t wait for profitability to turn negative before examining your business. Look at your metrics. Are you growing? Are your cash reserves increasing? Is your team delivering efficiently?

    Making the hard decisions

    When faced with multiple problems, use this hierarchy:

    1. Revenue/Sales – Without this, nothing else matters
    2. People – Wrong people sabotage everything else
    3. Operations – Efficiency multiplies the impact of good people and sales

    Within each category, prioritize based on impact. A 10% improvement in sales might matter more than a 50% improvement in shipping speed. A toxic employee might be destroying more value than three operational inefficiencies.

    You can’t fix everything at once. Focus on the most critical issue, resolve it, then move to the next. This approach produces far better results than trying to fix everything simultaneously.

    The businesses that survive and thrive are those that can diagnose their most pressing problems and address them decisively. Use this framework, be honest about where your gaps are and tackle them. Your future self — and your business — will thank you.

    Alykhan Jetha

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  • Closer or Colder? How AI Shapes Your Customer Relationships | Entrepreneur

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    I’m not going to lie, the latest generation of AI, especially large language models and agentic AI, is nothing short of impressive. At Human Cloud, we used tools like Claude and Windsurf to accomplish in 5 minutes what had previously taken us 5 years.

    On the surface, it’s a story of overnight magic. But dig deeper and you’ll find that the real magic wasn’t the AI itself; it was the five years of groundwork that came before. We spent that time using spreadsheets, Canva graphics, CRM automations and hacky off-the-shelf tools to create the right sales and delivery motion, and validate our customers’ needs.

    Only then did the AI become a true accelerator, as we used Claude, Windsurf and AWS to create the Human Cloud Platform in less than 5 minutes.

    This brings up a crucial point. AI can easily be a distraction, prioritizing hype and buzz over real revenue and profitability. Why? Because the fundamental principle of business remains unchanged: every breakthrough starts with a deep understanding of what your customers need.

    Before you invest another dollar in AI, ask yourself one question: Is this technology making us closer to our customers, or pulling us further away?

    Here are five steps to ensure AI helps you get closer.

    1. Manually implement before automating

    “Do things that don’t scale” is a famous startup moniker brought up by Paul Graham, co-founder of Y Combinator, in his essay in 2013. As a 4x founder myself, this ethos has always run true.

    In the case of AI, in every scenario, ask yourself if there is a manual alternative. If there is, try that first, then automate based on customer demand.

    Related: LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman: To Scale, Do Things That Don’t Scale

    2: Capture enough manual feedback

    Step 1 is only half the story. The other half is ensuring you have enough of the right type of feedback to automate what really works. My strongest recommendation is to capture feedback that’s closest to customers actually paying, engaging and sharing.

    I learned this the hard way in a former startup. We spent 3 months listening and iterating on prototypes based on feedback. We were maniacal in the level of detail we captured, from the user experience to the design. Then we launched, and less than 5% of these users actually paid. Instead, we shouldn’t have listened to what they said, but instead prioritized what they did.

    If you want a book to help you capture the right type of feedback, check out The Mom Test.

    Related: How the ‘Mom Test’ Can Help You Cut Through B.S. and Find Important Answers

    3: Make AI accessible for everyone, not just AI experts

    Rather than investing in an AI team or hiring AI experts, give everyone an opportunity to apply AI across their team and their work.

    Preston Mossman, Senior Director of AI Consulting for Galaxy Square, told me, “learning to use AI is a muscle you have to build. A lot of people self-select out because they can’t use AI today to help them, but the first step is to accelerate their comfort and understanding in a way that feels valuable to them.”

    When asking Preston about ways companies have helped their leaders get comfortable with it, he brought up investing in AI-related tools for interested individuals.

    In his words, “if your mechanic told you about a $50 wrench that could get your job done just as well for half the cost, you would buy it for them or find a new mechanic (with the $50 wrench).”

    Leaders not using AI in 5 years will be like leaders not using a computer today.

    Related: Why Your AI Strategy Will Fail Without the Right Talent in Place

    4: Hire independent experts first

    Telling someone to use AI with no support is like telling someone to jump out of a plane without a parachute.

    Obviously, hiring AI experts as full-time employees would be expensive and out of reach for most of us. Likewise, AI trainings take time, might be expensive, and rarely has direct applicability from training to application.

    But a shortcut is hiring individuals who already use AI, as 65% of independent experts were already using AI as far back as 2024, and 95% of independent experts stated that AI makes them more competitive.

    This brings up step 4: to hire flexible talent first, with flexible talent defined as independent, freelance, and fractional experts.

    The data is clear that flexible talent upskills faster than full-time employees and is ahead of the curve in AI adoption and effectiveness. It’s not just AI, Deloitte research shows that the independent workforce upskills faster than their full-time peers.

    There are also four massive benefits of flexible talent compared to full-time. You can control cost. You have a quicker time to effectiveness. You learn by seeing their expertise. And the most important benefit is that this is the future workforce.

    To get started, look for a flexible talent platform that is specialized in your region, industry, and the application you need AI for. There are over 800 of these specialized solutions.

    Related: Solopreneurship and Freelancing Is Here to Stay — Are You Ready?

    5: Scale like the cloud

    We take for granted how transformational cloud computing has been for us entrepreneurs. Without getting too geeky, what it really did was enable us to scale in line with customer demand rather than taking big bets because of large fixed costs.

    Apply this same mindset to AI.

    Do you think your AI idea is the next big breakthrough that will transform your company, your industry, and the world? That’s great. Now go through steps 1-4 before you bet the farm.

    I’m not going to lie, the latest generation of AI, especially large language models and agentic AI, is nothing short of impressive. At Human Cloud, we used tools like Claude and Windsurf to accomplish in 5 minutes what had previously taken us 5 years.

    On the surface, it’s a story of overnight magic. But dig deeper and you’ll find that the real magic wasn’t the AI itself; it was the five years of groundwork that came before. We spent that time using spreadsheets, Canva graphics, CRM automations and hacky off-the-shelf tools to create the right sales and delivery motion, and validate our customers’ needs.

    Only then did the AI become a true accelerator, as we used Claude, Windsurf and AWS to create the Human Cloud Platform in less than 5 minutes.

    The rest of this article is locked.

    Join Entrepreneur+ today for access.

    Matthew Mottola

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  • How to Empower Your Team to Solve Problems Without You | Entrepreneur

    How to Empower Your Team to Solve Problems Without You | Entrepreneur

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    It is quite common among entrepreneurs and leaders to become the ultimate “fix-it person,” always on the lookout for a solution. After all, we’ve built businesses by making decisions, fixing issues and clearing hurdles. However, as you continue growing your business, attempting to solve every issue you encounter is counterproductive, as it acts as a constraint on development and hinders team growth.

    It is important for you not to try to solve all the issues you come across. You need to build an environment where issues are addressed and resolved without your involvement so that you can concentrate on the strategic level.

    This is how you can work on your team, construct the process and stop fixing everything yourself.

    Related: 7 Ways to Help Your Employees Become Better Problem-Solvers

    1. Crisis playbooks: Create detailed guides for your team

    Perhaps the best way to stop being the “fixer” is to equip the team with tools and enable them to deal with the recurring challenges themselves. This is where creating crisis playbooks comes into play. A crisis playbook is a step-by-step plan that your team follows when faced with certain types of problems that occur repeatedly. But it is not just a list of directions; it is a well-thought-out strategy that enables them to manage emergencies on their own.

    For example, if there are many complaints from customers, you do not have to interject each time. Instead, create a step-by-step playbook for the team to follow — how to respond, to whom one should report the problem and what to do after the problem is solved. It reduces interference in your business operations, yet it also maintains a predictable and organized pace.

    Actionable insight: Select the three most frequent issues in your business and focus on them. Develop a precise roadmap for each of them, explaining who is accountable for what and how a problem can be resolved. Teach your subordinates to use these playbooks instead of seeking your assistance in the process.

    2. Empower your team: Give them the authority to solve problems

    If your team is always waiting for your approval or for your decision, then it is high time to change the way you lead your team. It is crucial for leaders to understand that implementing the concept of empowering your team is not as simple as throwing the reigns and saying, “Go for it.” It is about providing them with the freedom to make certain decisions without necessarily having to consult their superiors as long as they fall within a certain laid-down set of guidelines.

    When your team is endowed with authority and trust, they are more likely to exercise ownership of the roles given to them. Self-empowerment minimizes the level of reliance on you, enhances the rate of decision-making and promotes accountability. It also helps you to stop worrying about unimportant details and start focusing on the more important strategic tasks.

    Actionable insight: You must set limits on what your team is allowed to do without consulting you. Let them manage tasks on their own within such constraints and only report issues that need your intervention. In the long run, you will realize that fewer matters get to your table, and efficiency will increase.

    3. Early warnings: Implement systems to flag issues before they become crises

    Instead of waiting for issues to turn into major concerns, develop early signals that notify your team of potential issues before they become huge. These systems can be simple, for instance, using an automated software program to monitor for unusual activity or using regular team meetings to find out small issues before they become big problems.

    If problems are reported from the onset, they can be solved before they become a big problem in the organization. This minimizes tension and confusion and enables more rational approaches to problems.

    Actionable insight: Ensure that you use technologies that will enable continuous evaluation of your business processes. Whether it is the customer satisfaction index, the stock status or the performance of the employees, it is always advantageous to detect issues early before they snowball into something bigger. Schedule weekly or bi-weekly meetings with your team to discuss possible problems before they arise.

    Related: 4 Secrets to Building a Team That Can Handle Anything

    4. No interruptions for minor issues: Let your team handle the small tasks

    Not every problem is worth your time and energy. In fact, most aren’t. However, if you are always drawn into small issues, you will be bogged down by them and won’t be able to look at the big picture. For efficiency and better team relations, create an environment where your team understands that they don’t have to report petty problems to you. It could be small issues perceived by customers, small issues affecting day-to-day operations or even issues that employees have against each other or the company. It is okay to let your team deal with these issues on their own, in accordance with the playbooks and systems you have put in place.

    Actionable insight: Define what should be considered minor and what is critical in terms of the business. For small items, let the team decide what is best. If they know you trust them to solve these problems, they will, and you can spend more of your time on strategic planning and development.

    5. Define priority levels: What’s truly urgent?

    When everything is a fire, nothing becomes a priority to deserve the attention of a fire. There will always be competing priorities in any organization, and therefore, one of the toughest tasks is to know what is critical, what is important and what is less critical.

    If your team is still foggy on this, they will come to you with all sorts of things, just in case. To overcome this, you need to establish priority levels within your team. Set standards for what can be considered a high-priority area as opposed to a low-priority one. Emergent issues should be taken into your attention, whereas the rest of the problems must be solved based on protocols and procedures.

    Actionable insight: Discuss with your team members and try to divide various kinds of problems by their importance. Emergent issues could be any matter that is critical to customers or the safety or financial health of the business. The rest should be left to the team or addressed at your next meeting. In this manner, the team is aware of what really requires your intervention and what can be managed by them.

    6. Focus on long-term solutions, not quick fixes

    In many cases, instead of solving the root of the problem, we are quick to address the issues at hand and provide a quick solution. This is where many businesses end up being in a constant state of firefighting. Instead, motivate your team to develop a long-term perspective toward the problem.

    Instead of quickly patching up a problem, ask them to look deeper: What led to this problem, and how can it be avoided in the future? Long-term solutions may take longer at the beginning, but they help to save countless hours and headaches in the future. When your team is working on sustainable solutions, your business operations will be better, and you won’t find yourself having the same issues repeatedly.

    Actionable insight: Remind your team members to always look beyond the surface of their tasks. Tell them to search for the root causes of issues and identify methods that can be employed to solve such issues and ensure that they do not happen again. This way of thinking will help eliminate many of the trivial problems that arise and give you more time to focus on the important questions.

    Related: 3 Leadership Secrets That Lead to Team Empowerment

    A leader’s role is not to be the one who solves all the problems that arise in the organization. It is to create a team and a system in which difficulties do not turn into issues in the first place. Thus, by writing crisis playbooks, giving your team more freedom, introducing early alert systems and working towards the future, you can take your attention off of mere survival and put it on success.

    Finding solutions is crucial, but finding ways to avoid problems is revolutionary. It is better to dedicate more time to leadership and planning and enable your staff to deal with problems proactively on their own. The result? A more efficient and empowered team — and a business that feels like one seamless unit.

    Chris Kille

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  • The Question Every Business Owner Needs to (But Doesn’t) Ask Themselves | Entrepreneur

    The Question Every Business Owner Needs to (But Doesn’t) Ask Themselves | Entrepreneur

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    During the Great Recession, I went to an Entrepreneurs’ Organization Learning Event where the speaker changed my life. He said that all 50 of the business owners in the room were inevitably working on their biggest problems, trying to fix them. And in that treacherous economic time, we each had plenty of problems! He knew we thought about those problems all the time — at night, in the shower, while driving, on the weekends — and that we had our very best people working on them, too. All of our resources were focused on fixing problems. That’s human nature.

    The thing he said that stuck with me is simple yet brilliant: Rather than focusing on problems, we should find what is going right and put our resources toward doing more of it.

    My company followed his advice, found the thing that was going right and did more of it. It saved the company and inspired a full pivot to an even better business. That statement literally changed my life!

    Related: Want a Successful Business? Focus on These 5 Things

    Ask the right question

    If you search the internet for questions you should be asking about your business, most concern expense control, profitability and solving issues. I even queried AI, and while I got a list of 12 great questions, they didn’t include, “What is going right?”

    The company growth and execution systems used by business accelerator programs do not typically prompt entrepreneurs with this critical question. In fact, they often direct resources at identifying your largest issues — encouraging business owners to work on up to 10 issues all the time.

    Now, I am not saying that time should not be spent fixing problems. Problems that could kill the company must be addressed. What I’m asking is:

    What would happen if you spent an equal amount of time amplifying what is going right?

    Make peace with quitting

    Doing more of what is going right often gets backburnered in favor of Ms./Mr. “Fix It” and the notion of never giving up. But if quitting something in favor of doing something that produces better results grows the company, why not?

    In Annie Duke’s book, Quit, she outlines all kinds of situations where it makes more sense to quit than continue. The 336-page book has 11 chapters of examples. I am not saying you must immediately quit certain things to make space for amplifying others. But make peace with the idea that it’s okay to deemphasize some issues or put them on the back burner and turn your focus toward what is going right to see what you can do.

    Related: 7 Ways to Refocus on What’s Truly Important

    Identify what is going right

    So, what could be going right in your business? There are many possibilities:

    1. Is one product line more successful than the others?
    2. Is there a type of customer who is buying more and appreciating you more?
    3. Is there a way of delivering your product that is getting more traction than another?
    4. If you have multiple locations, is one doing better than another?
    5. Are there certain types of people who are more successful in your organization?
    6. Do some of your marketing and advertising methods perform much better than others?
    7. Is one distribution channel working better than another?
    8. Operationally, which methods of running your business are working well?

    Why not double down on these winning ways? Look for things that succeed with little effort or come naturally — things that are flywheel-ish. Intentionally apply less effort to the things that are hard to do, require a ton of effort, and feel like pushing rope in order to free up resources for doubling down on what is working.

    As you ponder this, an important tip is that the thing going right might be a small thing. So look high and low, and involve your team — because everyone sees your business from a different viewpoint. For example, let’s say you have 50 customers and three newer ones are nuts about your product. That could be one of the things you identify as going right. Ask yourself what those three customers have in common and how you can find more of them.

    Break free of the past

    Another common scenario is that something that worked well in the past just is not working well now because of increased competition or another factor. Is it time to deemphasize that in favor of something else? Just because you started that way does not mean you have to stick with it. For example, maybe retail was working well, but now your new online approach or wholesale shows more promise.

    A friend of mine runs a business in which they track what advertising source each sale comes from in a traffic log. One of the big questions that came up in my search to ask yourself was, “How do you increase sales?” This friend was always pursuing that. He continuously invested in new methods of advertising. In areas that were getting poor results, he would try to tweak the wording or ad placement. I suggested he double down on the top three sources rather than trying to improve the poorly performing ones marginally. In other words, “Why not just do more of what is working?”

    He followed that suggestion and — while that was not the sole reason for it — his company revenue has since tripled. He shared that focusing on what was going right freed up all kinds of team time because it takes less time to do more of what you know versus dreaming up new strategies and fighting the tide. It also boosted company confidence, as more customers supported the company by buying their product.

    Related: If You Focus on Problems, You’ll Only Find More Problems. Here’s How to Focus on Solutions.

    Fight your ‘fix it’ nature

    One of my favorite thought leaders, Dan Sullivan, once asked our strategic coach class, “What do you get if you work really hard on a weakness for 10 years?”

    The answer: At best, a really good weakness.

    It is hard to fight our deep-down entrepreneurial desire to identify problems and try to fix them, and it feels oddly unnatural to find the thing that is going right and do more of it. But it is worth the effort! This one question has the possibility of transforming your business and growing revenues to the next level.

    Barry Raber

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  • Turning Employees Into Problem Solvers With a 3-Step Plan | Entrepreneur

    Turning Employees Into Problem Solvers With a 3-Step Plan | Entrepreneur

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    As a growth advisor, I work with leaders looking to grow and scale their businesses.

    One of the biggest issues I found preventing companies from scaling was the fact that all the problem-solving was left up to the leader. If you took the leader out of the equation, it seemed that the team members lacked the agency to solve the problems on their own. And on top of that, some of the leaders often lacked the confidence in trusting their teams to make decisions.

    So, what is the million-dollar answer to fixing this problem you ask? Well, it is not simple, but it certainly is worth the effort. If you want your company to scale and grow, you need to create high-functioning teams. And in order to do that, companies need to build a culture of problem-solvers. As a leader, it is your responsibility to create a space where your team members are not afraid to speak up, feel empowered and know what is expected of them. It is only then that you can effectively scale and grow your company.

    Baptiste Monnet

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  • How to Align With Your Team to Solve Any Problem

    How to Align With Your Team to Solve Any Problem

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    I see it every day, all the time: different perspectives, power struggles and personalities out of alignment. In any industry, leaders and managers are constantly solving problems and making decisions of all sizes that often require team collaboration. While one solution may not be able to consider every single dimension of a problem, we can come to a decision that considers enough dimensions to satisfy as many stakeholders as possible. That step, however, is easier said than done.

    How do we overcome the obstacles of different perspectives and create alignment to make better decisions as a team? By aligning each individual piece in the same direction.

    With everyone aligned around scope, criteria and mentality, no matter how different our roles, we all know the right direction to row. An effective team effort depends on this alignment.

    Related: ‘The Alignment Factor’: Collaboration Is the Backbone of Alignment

    Align scope to focus on the problem

    To start a productive conversation that results in effective solutions, the first place where a team should be aligned is on the scope. To do that, we need to align our perspectives on the scope of the problem. Different people could perceive the scope of a challenge differently. Until the scope is aligned, any discussion is unlikely to help solve the problem.

    A couple evaluating their dog’s diet, for example, might have different scopes: One partner might be talking about the dog’s diet for the animal’s health, while the other is concerned with how much it affects the monthly budget. Both topics are important, but they need to be addressed separately. Once they identify which is of greater importance, budget or diet, they can align around that scope and have a meaningful discussion.

    Address scope first to draw a boundary around the intended purpose within which to find an applicable solution. This anchors team brainstorming to a focal point while allowing for as many divergent ideas as possible that stay within that scope. Let everyone contribute their perspective, but throw out anything that diverges.

    Align criteria toward results

    After the scope is defined, we need to align around criteria — which can be used to judge a solution as good or bad — to help narrow down those possible solutions with consensus among the team.

    A CMO and CFO may have very different problems to solve, for instance, market share for the CMO and profit margin for the CFO. This may result in an argument when making decisions, even when examining the same scope, like a branding budget. To work together on this decision, they need to establish the criteria they will use to evaluate the value of their solutions: Higher profit margins for the year or brand building for the long run? Then, management teams can align and focus their solutions around what brings the most value to the company. Both the CMO and CFO may make their own decisions in operations as long as such decisions have a positive impact measured by that shared set of criteria.

    By successfully setting this type of shared criteria among team members, you’re creating a general standard that can be used to measure results. The criteria act as guardrails, minimizing the possibility of team members making counter efforts and eliminating arguments over the final results.

    Related: Why Team Building is Essential for Your Business Success

    Align interests for a common benefit

    For effective problem-solving as a team, all parties need to be able to see the transition from our own perspectives to that of others, and each party involved should benefit at least in some perspective(s). If I go into a decision feeling like I have to win a battle, this transition of perspectives is not likely to take place. The mentality of winning or losing is a zero-sum game — I win at the cost of your loss. Instead, we need to start on the same side of solving the problem.

    Of course, some people may be unwilling to move from their own perspective. This means the scope can no longer be a simple matter of solving the problem. We have to first stretch our scope in a slightly different direction — in this case, to my relationship with or the team dynamics around that person — before coming back to that original one.

    First, I try to evaluate that person’s motivation to win. Is this related to this person’s personal interest? Or is it just a personality issue? If it’s related to personal interest, I focus on aligning this person’s interest with the team’s. This way, the individual can realize the personal benefit of the team achieving their goal. If it is just a matter of personality, I would help them understand the damage of their personality, at the expense of the team failing to reach their goal.

    In some situations, no matter how much effort you put in, people may not be able to change. Is it worth putting in more effort? This judgment call is based on the criteria and a return on investment (ROI) concept. When your efforts can no longer be justified in reaching the team goal, you may have to make the tough choice to leave that particular person out of the decision-making process for the sake of achieving the overarching objective. Once you resolve this divergent scope for the team, everyone can return to aligning around solving the original problem.

    To effectively solve any problem, we must consider all possible solutions at that time by analyzing which factors are within our control and which are unavoidable obstacles. This will allow you to focus your time and effort on actions that ultimately result in progress.

    Alignment is built on team effort

    When the team moves as a whole and works in unity, they become more powerful than any individual on the team. If the team works sporadically and is out of alignment, it might be better to have a single person on the job. Rather than fighting to find solutions, everyone in alignment can work together to find better ones more efficiently.

    Related: The 4 Levels of Organizational Alignment

    Align interests around solving a problem so the team can work as a whole. This is one of the most instrumental steps you can take toward solving the problem. Of course, there may still be arguments, but the foundation of interest alignment in a problem makes it easier to align the scope and criteria for solving it. Even two different departments with different agendas and scopes, like sales and accounting, should be able to find a common denominator in their alignment with the company’s scope and interests. When we get all parties on the same side, we find more and better solutions. The framework of this process is universal and applicable to any problem-solving scenario, from agreeing on dog food brands to aligning board-level initiatives or anything else in between.

    Simin Cai, Ph.D.

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