When businesses jump to solutions ...
One of the easiest ways to understand how a business thinks and how decisions are made is to listen to the first sentence in a meeting.
“We need …”
A new website. A brochure. A new CRM. Maybe a LinkedIn campaign. AI implementation. More leads. An exhibition.
It’s remarkable how often the conversation begins with a solution rather than an objective.
Somewhere along the way, we have quietly accepted that we already know what needs to be done. Perhaps we’ve become so comfortable starting with solutions that we’ve stopped questioning where they come from.
Now, it may well be that what is proposed proves to be exactly the right investment. However, when we’ve reached the answer before agreeing on the question, how do we know we are working to solve the right problem?
Why we naturally start with solutions
We all like solutions.
Solutions feel like progress. They are easy to apply our creativity and imagination to. Easy to discuss, to buy into. Questions, on the other hand, are a little more uncomfortable. They feel like delay. They slow meetings down, surface disagreements, question and expose unfinished thinking, or challenge assumptions that everyone thought had already been settled. So we skip them altogether.
Imagine two meetings.
One begins with the question,“what are we trying to achieve?” The other starts with, “we need a new website.”
Which do you think people are most likely to contribute to and engage with?
The second meeting immediately is tangible. It feels like there is a direction. People start talking about suppliers, colours, budget, a wish list of failings and personal gripes of the current system, timings. Everyone feels productive. To everyone sitting in that room, progress has been made.
The irony, of course, is that they may all have spent an hour solving the wrong problem. Optimising for the wrong thing.
Why? Because nobody stopped to ask whether the website was ever the real issue.
Diagnosis before prescription
Now don’t get me wrong.
I describe myself as a solution-oriented person. And I genuinely am.
But at the same time, I have also learnt that being solution-oriented does not mean reaching for the first answer. I have had to work hard over the years not to fall into the rather easy trap of jumping straight to a conclusion.
It is important to step back. To see the bigger picture. It means taking responsibility for making sure that you are solving the right problem – not the first problem.
The analyst and scientist in me has taught me that what you think is, or is likely to be, the correct answer – on review – is not. New evidence has a habit of changing what you think you know. Good conclusions are not built on confidence alone. They are built on understanding.
I see the same pattern in consulting.
Clients rarely bring me problems. They bring me assumptions disguised as solutions.
My role is to step beyond those assumptions and solutions, and begin with the diagnosis.
The invisible work
If you think about it, this is exactly how most professionals work.
A healthcare specialist would not prescribe treatment simply because a patient arrived requesting a particular medication. They would first look to understand the symptoms, consider the wider context, and establish what is actually causing the problem.
An engineer doesn’t recommend a bridge, before understanding the landscape or the underlying geology.
Strategic marketing, and wider business concepts, should be no different.
The brochure, website, or campaign is the prescription. It’s the outcome of the thinking that should be coming before it. Before recommending any channel, medium or outcome, we need to understand what the business is actually trying to achieve, who it needs to influence, and what needs to change.
The challenge is that diagnosis is largely invisible. Nobody sees the communication, the interview, the research. The difficult conversations about priorities.
Instead, they see the brochure. The website. An exhibition stand. The visible output that receives the credit. Not the invisible thinking that made it all worthwhile for the business.
The cost of starting with the answer
In reality, this extends well beyond marketing.
Imagine a company loses an important order. An immediate response may be, “we need to reduce costs.”
It feels 100% logical. Decisive and defensible.
However, if the underlying issue is that the sales pipeline has been running dry for months, cutting investment in business development and outreach may solve today’s financial pressure, while quietly making tomorrow’s problem even worse.
The first solution may have addressed an immediate need and the visible symptom, rather than the underlying cause.
Perhaps, then, we have misunderstood or misinterpreted what it means to be solution-oriented.
It isn’t about having the answer first. It’s not a competition to produce the quickest answer, nor an invitation to question every decision indefinitely.
It is about investing enough time at the beginning to understand the problem well enough that the eventual solution is looking to solve the right thing.
Once the objective is clear, the audience is understood and success has been defined, choosing the right channel, campaign, or investment often becomes surprisingly straightforward.
The quality of a solution is rarely determined by the pace to reach the answer. More often, it is determined by the quality of the thinking that came before it.
When marketing in your organisation feels busy but not effective, you are not alone. There is usually a deeper challenge in how marketing is being understood.
The Intuitive Marketing Coach is written for people trying to move beyond activity, assumptions, and box-ticking, towards something more deliberate, valued, and commercially effective. It explores a more intuitive approach to business. One grounded in better judgement, clearer thinking, and a more considered view of what marketing is actually there to do.
If you’re trying to move beyond activity and towards something more logical, intuitive, and ultimately more effective, subscribe.