Let’s say you have a problem with your marketing. You’re running an ad, for example, but not getting any response. You’ve studied the ad and thought about how you could “fix” it, but you don’t have a clue. You’re not sure if fixing it is even possible.
You come to me for advice. I look at the ad and immediately spot the problem. I tell you the solution is simple, but instead of telling you what it is, I say, “keep looking at the ad and you’ll find it.
You go back to studying the ad, and guess what? You find the problem and fix it. “It was obvious,” you say. “I don’t know how I missed it!”
What just happened? What happened is that when you first looked at the ad, you didn’t know there was a solution. Sure enough, you didn’t find one. When I told you I saw the problem and it was an easy fix, you were able to find the solution. . . because you knew there was one.
There’s probably a psychological principle at play here, but we don’t need to know what it is to know that this kind of thing happens all the time.
The other day I was playing “Words with Friends” against the computer (“Solo Play”). I almost always beat the computer and I realized that it’s probably programmed that way because if it beat you all the time, you would probably stop playing. So the computer gives you the tiles you need and/or plays words that open up spots for you to enable you to make high-score plays.
The other day I had an opening to make a triple-word score. I looked at my tiles but couldn’t find any words to fill the spot. Against a human opponent, I might have given up and tried something else. But knowing that the computer had probably given me the tiles I needed to find a word for that spot, I kept looking.
And I found it. I don’t know how I missed it.
When you know there’s a solution to a problem, you keep looking for it. You expect to find it and you often do. Even though the problem may seem insurmountable at first, when you know there is a solution, you keep at it.
How can we use this in our everyday problem solving? Should we always assume there is a solution, even if there is no evidence that one exists?
Perhaps not. Life is complicated and not every problem has an accessible solution. An ad that’s not working may not have a simple fix, no matter how much we assume that it does.
What we can do, however, is ask ourselves, “What if?” “What if there were an easy fix? What might it be?” In other words, while you shouldn’t always assume that there is any easy solution, you shouldn’t always assume that there isn’t.
Put the problem aside for awhile and come back to it with fresh eyes. Assume that there is an solution and see if you can find it.
You might not find an easy solution, but you’ve got a better chance of finding one than if you assume one doesn’t exist.
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