Are You Solving the Right Problem?

In the fast-paced world of business and brand management, it’s easy to feel trapped in a cycle of addressing symptoms rather than root causes. As leaders, it’s crucial to step back and ask: “What problem are we really solving?”

Are you creating a better band-aid or addressing why the wound occurred in the first place? Both approaches have merit, but understanding which one you’re pursuing is critical for strategic alignment. This dilemma isn’t new. In 1919, Edward Bullard invented the hard hat to prevent head injuries from falling objects. This addressed the root cause, revolutionizing workplace safety. In contrast, others were focused on the symptomatic solutions of creating better bandages and painkillers.

Sometimes, addressing symptoms can be lucrative. The pharmaceutical industry often focuses on creating faster-acting, more effective painkillers rather than tackling the underlying causes of pain. As a brand manager, you might develop the best meal-replacement shakes while another team addresses poor eating habits. You might create a better energy drink while another team focuses on the issues of sleep deprivation. While challenging, both strategies can coexist within the same company, targeting different aspects of the same overarching issue.

Here are some steps to consider on your innovation journey:

1. Start by clearly defining whether you’re addressing symptoms or root causes. This clarity will guide your innovation strategy and resource allocation.

2. Consider developing parallel approaches—one for immediate relief (symptom) and another for long-term solutions (cause).

3. Regularly engage with your audience to understand their underlying needs, not just their immediate wants.

4. Foster partnerships between teams focused on short-term solutions and those working on long-term innovations. This cross-functional collaboration can yield powerful insights and more comprehensive strategies.

5. Develop KPIs that reflect both immediate results and progress towards solving fundamental issues, ensuring you’re measuring impact holistically.

6. Finally, future-proof your approach by regularly reassessing your problem-solving strategy. Ensure it aligns with evolving market needs and technological advancements.

Remember, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. The key is to be intentional about your approach and ensure it aligns with your brand’s vision and values. By thoughtfully considering whether you’re putting out fires or preventing them, you’ll position your brand for sustainable success and meaningful impact. In doing so, you're not just solving problems—you’re creating a legacy of innovation that addresses both immediate needs and long-term challenges.

Do you suffer from the "better mousetrap" syndrome?

I've dealt with many brands through the years that had interesting ideas and products and yet couldn't imagine why people weren't beating down their doors to get to those amazing ideas.

It's pretty easy to get laser-focused on creating things. Thinkhaus Idea Factory does plenty of innovation and strategy workshops to help companies develop new ideas to take to market. In some ways, this is where better mousetraps are born. But those mousetraps need to be grounded in something more than personal preference.

Before launching your next big idea, your better mousetrap, ask yourself: Does your audience even realize they have a mouse problem?

Here's a simple way to approach the issue:
1. Start by gathering consumer insights to drive innovation. This doesn't have to be some exhaustive study. It can be some simple engagements where the team turns observations into actionable insights that the innovation team can leverage for better ideas. Consumers are lousy at telling you what product they need.

The average house is filled with products people love today but would have never asked for prior to invention. No consumer said they needed a microwave oven before they were introduced to microwave ovens. People didn't ask for refrigerators, televisions, dishwashers, or even lightbulbs, either. The insights around convenience are what led to the breakthrough ideas.

This is why I make the distinction between observations and insights. You could observe someone washing dishes by hand. That's a task getting done. The insights come from the dishwasher's frustration with the soap, sponge, scrub brush, volume of dishes, dirty water, and more. From those insights, you can create solutions that will have an audience.

2. Check out the marketplace in the areas you're considering. What are you going to be competing against? For blue ocean strategies, you're looking for holes you can fill where there are no competitors.

3. Ideate freely.

4. Engage with your target audience to validate your concept and make necessary refinements.

5. Refine, iterate, and keep checking.

6. Solve the mouse problem.

Need help with your better mousetrap? Let's talk.

Forget About Age. Just Stay Relevant. Why Companies and Careers Now Pivot on Continued Relevancy

The business world loves stereotypes, where old-line companies (we call them tankers) boast about their age, stability, and staying power while young startups (we call them speedboats) scream about their pace, out-of-the-box thinking, and innovation. Seasoned workers at tanker organizations get cast as rigid and resistant while their speedboat counterparts are hailed as adaptable and tech-savvy.

There is a need for both tanker and speedboat organizations. But let’s be clear here: the only thing you get with age is older. Age isn’t an indication of wisdom, sophistication, or savvy. Age alone does not determine ability to deliver.

Companies and employees of all vintages must constantly prove their relevance. Those who remain vitally engaged in evolving buyer needs, marketplace shifts, and emerging best practices can thrive across generations.

Why? As disruption accelerates, customer loyalty and industry standing mean less and less on their own. Brand trust must be re-won daily through execution—and expertise constantly recharged as new challenges arise.

In this environment, the question is not "how long has this company been around?" but rather "how are they innovating right now?"

The key is nurturing a culture and ethos of perpetual relevance across the enterprise.

For companies, this includes:

• Evaluating and optimizing their product/service mix based on real-time customer data, not legacy assumptions

• Maintaining an innovation pipeline to continually improve and pilot future offerings

• Tracking shifts in demographics, attitudes, and industry dynamics to get ahead of changes

• Breaking down outdated bureaucracy and silos slowing responsiveness

• Ensuring branding and messaging aligns with emerging buyer preferences

• Forging win-win partnerships with those driving disruption

• Empowering all levels to rapidly sense changes and solve problems

For individuals, it requires:

• Clearly understanding your differentiating value—where your strengths and passions intersect with critical problems to solve

• Proactively acquiring skills and knowledge that will retain relevance as the field evolves

• Expanding your network to gain new perspectives and potential collaborations

• Demonstrating adaptability and quick-study abilities that reduce the perceived risk of irrelevance

• Mastering new tools, processes, and systems before they go mainstream

• Establishing thought leadership by sharing forward-thinking insights

• Quantifying your impact through measurable contributions to goals

• Staying curious and engaged as the fresh face, not jaded or change-averse

In essence, continued relevance must be earned, not assumed—regardless of age or experience level. This holds true across disruptive startups and legacy giants, seasoned veterans and emerging talent.

The companies and careers that will thrive are those taking a relevance mindset into the future. One that embraces flexibility, innovation, and delivering enduring value as the only path to sustained success.

Tankers and Speedboats: Is your innovation program solving the right problems?

What's the balance between your tankers (people who excel at keeping the train on the track and dialing up efficiencies), and your speedboats (people looking to move fast and find what's next)?

Most companies need both. Too many speedboats and you can new idea your company out of existence. Too many tankers and the world will pass you by. With innovation, it's often best to let your speedboats race out to the front.

I'll use the Peloton bike as an example. (https://lnkd.in/e3DJd-W) In your typical company, the challenge goes out to build a better spinner bike, so the tankers get on it. They hyper-analyze materials, components and electronics, adding and honing to build the ultimate self-contained unit, like bikes have always worked.

But the Peloton team are speedboats. They combined a love of cycling, problems with scheduling rides and the isolation of working out alone, and came up with a better experience in general. Now you can be a part of a group experience—at home. Log in, ride, sweat and win alone and yet still with others. Brilliant.

Tankers can now fine tune the machine while the speedboats run ahead.

Tankers and Speedboats: Checking the box versus solving the issue.

Every company has check-the-box employees. These are people who keep their heads down and move through a steady list of to-do items.

Sometimes these are the tankers who were hired to keep the machine going. I have also found this in tankers disguising themselves as speedboats. These people like to check LOTS of boxes every day to show how busy they are.

But we need people who lift their heads up to identify and solve issues.

Take, for example, the lowly highway stripe. Before 1911, roads had no dividing lines to help people know when they'd strayed too far over. Maybe this wasn't a big problem on straight roads, but there were countless wrecks around curves as people drifted around the turn.

Check the box people don't see or solve this problem. But a guy named Edward Hines, who was a Michigan county road commissioner, saw the problem for what it was—solvable. He had his crews add lines to the center of the roads, and thereby changed the way we navigate highways around the world.

It wasn't a crazy invention or expensive idea.

But it wasn't anyone's job to solve this issue, either.

Tankers and Speedboats: Are you trapped by success, or failure?

Success can trap even the speedboats of a company into believing their one brilliant win is enough. It isn't. Companies must continue to innovate and learn, try and fail, learn more and stretch to find what's new. Because in every category, someone is out there willing to fight to make an impact. And those without the roadblock of success can do amazing things before they're told those things can't be done.

On the other end of the spectrum is failure, which leads to risk aversion. They say if a cat sits on a hot stove and gets burned he'll never sit on a hot stove again. The problem is that he won't sit on a cold one, either.

I worked with a company once that had tried a number of innovation approaches years before. During one intense period they'd tried consultants, students, PhDs and more only to come up short. So they stopped innovating and just focused on legacy products.

The tankers of the company convinced everyone that innovation was a bad thing and pointed to the old data as proof.

After a scare from a competitor, new management turned the innovation spigot back on and the company lived to fight another day.

Tankers and Speedboats: Are you over-engineering the solution?

The average tv remote control has 40+ buttons. Most people use about six on a regular basis and stretch to 10 in a crunch. So why do remote controls have the extra 30+ buttons? Because they can. But should they?

This is a classic tanker paradox. Instead of stopping with clean and simple, tankers are driven to add and build until all that extra space is filled.

I found this in an innovation program with a client a number of years ago. Market and consumer insights said consumers really wanted a product that did ONE particular job very well and came in reasonably priced. The tankers in the organization skewed the data to show that what people really wanted was a product that did a VARIETY of things.

We sketched ideas on a continuum and went back to consumers to double check things before heading further in product development. Sure enough, the simple ideas came out on top.

At this point the client took over the rest of the product development. What hit the market was a convoluted mess. The tankers won. And the product failed.

I've found healthy teams balance their tankers with speedboats who have the power to say no to over-engineering.