Japan has a lot of wisdom to share and one of my favourites is to not start with the solution to a problem. In Japan, the idea is to start with making sure you have the right problem to solve. This is not easy, because often we are super busy and moving at warp speed all the time, so just jumping in to fix a problem sounds like the best approach. There is a follow-on metaphor of the scaling of the wall. We work hard and progress rung by rung up the ladder, getting us to the top - the solution – only to find our ladder is up against the wrong wall. We don’t want that, do we?

Problem definition is sometimes obscured by having a number of factors to confront and not enough insight into which are the priority items. This might be for a lack of a data or from conflicting opinions. The issue remains a large one, though, which we must deal with at the very start of the process.

Here are some steps to consider in problem definition.

Step One: Silence Is Our Super Power

Once we get into an open discussion about identifying the problem, we can find we waste a lot of time and basically get no progress. We argue the toss on what to solve and can get stuck. Instead, have around six people in a team and have them all sit in silence and think. Now thinking is seriously hard work. It is particularly difficult for us today, because we are being corralled by algorithms spewing out one minute videos, fostering shorter and shorter concentration spans.

Ask the team to sit there for fifteen minutes in Round One and do nothing but think and write their issues on Post-It notes. This will be torture for some and very challenging for most. Nevertheless, as the organiser, we have to have guts to ignore the fervent and persistent impatient glancing at watches, head shaking, eyes rolling, yawning, etc., that will go on, as the team is possessed by a wave of boredom.

Step Two: Prioritise Issues

After the first fifteen minutes, everyone stays in silence and now we spend 3 minutes to arrange what we have come up with into a broad priority listing of where to start.

Step Three: Share Together - Round One

Now we start putting our ideas up on a chart or a wall. We attach the Post Its in priority order to the wall and explain our thinking to our colleagues. There is no judgement allowed at this point, because we are still on the journey and we don’t need any decision being taken yet.

Step Four: Whole Team Sharing

Once we get our teams idea’s out, we share it with the other teams and they do the same for us. We try to cross pollinate the thinking going on. There is no evaluation of what has been produced at this point.

Step Five: Think and Prioritise

After that stimulation, again, in silence, we keep thinking for another ten minutes. This is very hard because all the easy ideas have been tapped. Now we have to really dig to find the gold. We will adjust our previous priorities based on our new ideas.

Step Six: Share Together - Round Two

We bring our Post-It notes and add to what we came up with in the first thinking bracket. Again, we share the content with our teammates.

Step Seven: Whole Team Sharing Round Two

Again, each team presents what they have come up with, so that all the teams can share in the ideas.

Step Eight: Each Team Makes Selections

By this stage, we will have had a lot of information shared and we will have a pretty good idea of where everyone has placed their priorities. Now we have to make some decisions about which will be the issues which we will take forward to solve. Each team will coalesce the possibilities into a short list.

Step Nine: Whole Team Makes The Final Selections

Each team presents their selections and then decisions are taken on which issues are going to be picked up to work on.

There is usually a strong raft of similar issues which will have been highlighted. These commonalities make it easy to drive decisions about the final problems to work on. Remember, we are not after perfection here, so if we get good selections, then we are on the right track. We have created a hierarchy of issues to work with and we can get to them all over time. We start with what we consider the most burning issues.

The next stage is to use creative thinking to work on how to solve the issues once clarified and we covered that in a recent episode already.

The leader has a different role to that of the manager. The manager makes the business run on time, to quality and on budget. The leader does all of those things, plus sets the strategic direction for the business, crafts the culture and builds the people. If we want to control every aspect of the firm, then we have to micro-manage everything. Obviously, that is a choice, but as the leader we need to develop our people too and so we need to delegate work to them so that they can grow. In fact, as the leader, the ideal situation would be that we are only working on the most high-level things that only we can do.

If possible, we want to set the parameters of the business so that the team can self-manage themselves. Those parameters come in the form of some very useful tools called Vision, Mission and Values. Some people may think that Vision, Mission and Value are rather flowery, fluffy, flaky statements of little use, but they are denying themselves some important leverage points as the leader.

The Vision is a call out to what is the purpose of what we are doing. This is a fundamental thing, but in many companies the staff have an unclear idea of the purpose. We can recall the classic building the wall metaphor. Three stonemasons are asked what they are doing, and the first says, “building this wall”. The second one says, “I am building a new faculty building for the university”. The third one says, “I am building a facility to better educate future generation”. The metaphor makes the point that the understanding of purpose is different, even though each person was laying stone blocks to build a wall. We need to make sure that our team is clear on what is the purpose of why we are putting in all these long, hard hours.

The Mission is a clarification of what we do and, by definition, what we don’t do. Making the main thing the main thing sounds simple, but there are so many bright shiny objects and fashionable trends which can divert us. We need to make sure everyone understands what we need to concentrate on and not allow the business to be drawn off course.

The Values are the glue which bind us together. The leader’s job is to find out the common values of the team which will correspond with the values of the organisation and have everyone flying together in tight formation going in the same direction. The other important point is to make sure that the organisation lives the values and that the team lives the values. When the organisation rhetoric strays from the stated values, the cynicism becomes a cancer which eats away at the morale and teamwork of the firm.

Once we have set the guide rails, we can set the strategy to achieve the Vision. There will be a series of goals to be achieved to get us to where we want to be. Obviously, revenue and profit goals are going to be critical to the health and longevity of the firm. There will be quality considerations which relate to our brand and its positioning in the market. Cost of customer acquisition and the success of our marketing to help grow the business will bring their own sets of goals. Who we recruit and how we train them will have a major impact on the success of the company. Business is a one team against another team head-to-head struggle and the best team wins in the long term. Our sales team versus the opposition, our marketing prowess against that of so many rivals, our factory staff against the competition, our leadership bench strength against all comers in our industry sector.

We need to measure our progress and success in attaining our goals. There are activities and outcomes which we need to track. We break these down for each financial year and for longer term considerations and they must add up to attaining the Vision we have set. They must be objective and correct numbers, because incorrect data can hurt us and cause us to make poor decisions. Getting correct data is not always that easy and we must have systems to keep checking that what we think is happening is actually the case.

So think of this strategic plan as a funnel. The mouth of the funnel at the top is where we pour in the purpose, and gradually we keep refining the execution of the purpose by specifying more and more concrete details needed for its attainment.

Managers manage. That means they make sure everything runs on time, to cost and to quality. The leader does all of that, plus some additional important things. These include setting the strategic direction for the team and building the people’s capabilities. Part of the leader’s role is to unite everyone behind the direction they are setting for the team. There can be a lot of detail at the micro level about how to make the strategy a reality. One key component which needs to be set at the start is to re-clarify the purpose of the team. You would think that was pretty obvious. However, if the leader doesn’t work on defining it, there could be 10 people in the team and eleven different purposes.

Here is a simple six-step guide to setting the purpose.

1. What is meaningful about what your team does, from the perspective of the organisation as a whole (such as in relation to the stated purpose and vision)?

The team operates within the framework of the firm, but the leader must break that down to the team level and create a local version which matches the team’s reality in the field. How does your team fit into the big picture? Which colleagues from other departments are key partners and where is the coordination most required? There is often a firm wide Vision Statement which can be a good starting point and the task is to take that and create your own local version for the team.

2. What is meaningful about what your team does from the perspective of your clients?

We know what we sell, but sometimes we forget what the client is buying. They are not always the same things. For example, we might think we are selling leadership training, but what the client is buying might be succession planning or greater productivity. It is always important that every person in the team has a clear understanding of the client's needs.

Jan Carlzon’s book “Moment of Truth” was an excellent guide to the importance of making sure the entire series of contact points with the client were aligned and operating at the same quality levels. An example would be the person who answers the phone is pleasant and professional, but the person the client is then transferred to is rude or grumpy. The firm brand went from heavenly clouds to depths of hell in one second.

3. How should your team members behave as they are delivering what matters?

This comes back to what are the team and organisational values? The leader will always have a wide spread of values scattered across their team and their job is to unite everyone behind the core values of the team. The value set defines how everyone thinks about the clients and that, in turn, defines how they interact with the clients. There is also the issue of how the team members interact with each other? Is there a strong level of mutual respect or we are in a pit of vipers with corporate politics run amok?

4. What are the expected results for the team and what are we doing when we are acting according to our purpose?

We are establishing KPI, goals, targets etc., to make the outputs needed clear to everyone. Does each individual have a target or are there team based goals? In the latter case, do people within the team understand their role in delivering the team result?

5. What actions do you, as the leader, need to do to help fulfill the purpose?

Taking care of the logistics, resources, permissions, interdepartmental cooperation are common leader roles. There is also the key role of coach to the team members to bolster their motivation and skills. Often though, as busy, busy leaders, we transition from coach to mad pirate captain barking out orders and making people walk the plank if they don’t perform. We set the tone for the team and we set the role model of how we are going to operate in this team.

6. Who do you need to be as a leader to fulfill the purpose (characteristics/ qualities?

We should never forget that every single member of our team is a ninja level “boss watcher” and they are constantly scanning us for any signs of crumbling between what we say and what we do. We set the pace and the quality levels for the team. That means we have to be lifetime learners, very well organised and totally professional in our work. It also means we have to be calm in the midst of the raging storms which hit our team from time to time and be the rock around which everyone can shelter.

Use these six prompts to create the purpose for your team, either for them or with them. I would recommend “with them”, because the team who designs the purpose together has the best levels of ownership of the outcomes and is more likely to execute well on what they have produced.