Solution Space: All these ideas but little innovation and growth

Growing up all of us are taught to solve problems, to come up with ideas. That’s the way that we graduate school, and land the next promotion. We are swimming in a culture that celebrates “solving”, but does very little to equip us with the tools to find problems worth solving. 

Most organizations concentrate their efforts around the discovery and development of solutions. These organizations operate in the solution space where speed is of the essence. Metrics are based on “users” doing what the organization intended: engagement, OKRs, KPIs, etc. Every tool and method is then aimed at “customers,” “passengers,” “members,” “participants,” or any of those other nouns you might use to reference somebody that the organization is trying to support or market to. This focus has meant that the tools of the solution space do not allow you to understand people beyond the narrow lens of their relationship to your solutions. 

So when pushed by a desire to excel and compete, teams try to innovate for people, all they know of these people is the sliver of information seen through the usage and awareness of their products & solutions. This lack of deep understanding is compounded by the rapid pace of the solution space and the lack of awareness about (or outright prohibition to use) all the tools at their disposal. Moreover, the organization is guided by metrics that only focus on the organization’s intentions, not the people they seek to serve. Teams can unwittingly introduce bias and false assumptions into their findings, and imagine promises where there are none. Eventually teams end up creating solutions that at best serve a subset of people well, leave most of people with an ill-fitting experience, and at worse harm those who could benefit most.