Solve meaningful problems
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The ability to solve meaningful problems is a skill every creative pro must learn to master.
To understand how to do this, look briefly at the story of John Harrison. He was a British amateur clockmaker who took on and solved one of the toughest problems of the 18th century: to devise a reliable way to calculate longitude for improved ship navigation.
Longitude is a coordinate that locates you on an east-west axis. It was far more complicated to measure than latitude—the north-south coordinate—which could be calculated using a fixed star in the northern sky. Longitude had no such fixed point because of how the earth rotates.
There was plenty of incentive to solve this problem. Lives and money were at stake. The lack of reliable longitude coordinates in navigation caused many shipwrecks: that was big business for a seafaring nation. As a result, there was a lucrative prize, being offered by the British-based Board of Longitude: solve the longitude puzzle and earn a reward that amounted to about $5 million dollars in today’s money.
Harrison understood that in the absence of being able to measure relative to a fixed point in the sky, the solution to solving longitude was in measuring time. So he developed a portable clock that he called a chronometer. Several of his prototypes failed. But eventually he developed a chronometer that met and even exceeded the performance requirements set out by the evaluation board.
Not that he won the prize (more on that in a moment). Harrison’s story teaches us that some solutions are deeper than the initial problem at hand, and that creativity and resiliency are essential to do what’s right and not just what’s expedient.
There are six things you must do as a creative pro to solve a problem skilfully.
Define meaningfully.
As I point out often: what you sell is not what people buy. That applies to interesting problems, too. Take time to ask probing questions and apply first principles thinking (https://us4.campaign-archive.com/?u=89226eb68936fc712577977b8&id=07549c97cd) .
Harrison understood that the deeper problem was the need for a reliable, precise navigation system. And you couldn’t achieve that using the same navigational methods that had been in use for centuries for measuring latitude. There wasn’t an easy fix or a simple hack. The problem was bigger than that.
Disaggregate skilfully. Break-up all tasks into smaller pieces first, otherwise you’ll be at risk of getting overwhelmed and losing sight of the problem you were hired to solve. A challenge Harrison faced was that some on the evaluation board simply didn’t like his solution to the problem. They said they wanted something simple and cheap. A portable, custom-made clock that you bring aboard a vessel was neither of those things. But Harrison persevered. He showed that for all major criteria, his was the best, most durable and most reliable approach to solving a highly complicated problem.
Prioritize ruthlessly. Understand the creative constraints you are working against. And there are always constraints. Sometimes it’s budgetary. Sometimes it’s scope-based. If you skip this step, you risk winding up picking a solution that misses too many of the most important markers. Harrison cared far less about the prize than about solving the deeper problem at hand. Set priorities early and stick to them. If there are some constraints that you choose to overlook, have a very good explanation why. If you have defined your problem correctly, prioritizing will be almost self evident.
Show progress not just process. People invest a lot when they entrust you to solve a problem for them. You owe it to your client to show them milestones or deadlines that you are going to reach at every stage in the project that you have so skillfully disaggregated. Harrison did this with every prototype: showing when he learned, what needed to be improved and how to do that. Showing progress is how you instil and sustain confidence in yourself and in others.
Plan for variability. I could write a series of articles on this point alone. Any solution that doesn’t allow for variability in outcomes is a rigid one and is bound to fail. Harrison’s solution to solving the longitude problem had to take into account unpredictable climate conditions, vessel sizes, navigational mistakes, crew inexperience and human error, among other factors. If your solution only works in well-controlled circumstances, you don’t really have a workable solution at all.
Measure and adjust. Be prepared to look carefully at your progress at every stage and be ready to make adjustments. Like Harrison, your path to a full solution rests in what you measure. Be ready to take the data you collect and interpret, and then draw some uncomfortable conclusions. Resist the magnetic pull of confirmation bias in which you ignore all facts other than those that suit what you feel is true.
All creative work finds its roots in the mastery of problem solving. Recognize that your initial impression of the problem you are being hired to solve might be incorrect. Be ready to do some digging: ask probing questions and reevaluate your underlying assumptions. The result will steer you towards better work, better outcomes and a lasting process in service of your craft.
Very best, Patrick
P.S. Every time you forward this to a friend, I earn another reader. It helps me a lot. Do that now.
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