The Problem and the Non-Solution

What’s wrong with presentations like the table below?  You’ll find tables like that in many enterprise communications.

Problem	Solution
Customers moving to a competitor’s product.	Increase product information campaign to let customers know the benefits of our product
Employees unhappy about the new salary arrangements.	Provide a channel for employees to voice their concerns.

Let’s ignore the actual problems and solutions as shown – they are just vehicles for this discussion.  The problem with solutions like this is that there is no description of the desired effect that will dissolve (or reduce) the problem.  For problem number 1, what is the intended effect of the solution? Is it to stop the customers from moving to the competitor?

Before a solution to a problem is proposed, we need to first identity the effect we want.  What will the world be like once the (still unknown) solution has been put into effect? For the first problem, perhaps what we want to achieve is a stanching of the flow of customers to the other side.  Next, we ask what is the measure?  How do we measure the effect?  One measure might be the number of customers per month moving to the competitor.  The higher the better. 

By this method, we make it clearer what we want the solution to do.  We make it clear what the mission of the solution is: to stanch the flow of customers to the competitor. 

We can come up with several solutions to this.  For example, we might decide we want to offer additional perks to our products.  Or we might decide to lower our prices.  The next question is: which of these solutions might be the most effective?  That is, which one will more considerably deliver the effect we want?  We can measure solutions by several attributes.  These would include the number of losses it stops, the cost to implement the solution, the length of time required for the solution to be implemented, and so forth.  We decide which solution offers the best bang for buck based on these attributes (using systems analysis).

Only in this way can we show the solid relationship between the problem, the effect desired that dissolves the problem, and the solution that will bring the intended effect.