Do you rush to define the problem?

The rate of innovation in technology, the emerging dynamics of the world of work, and the acceptance of cross-over domain experts into new career paths provides tremendous opportunities for breakthroughs in all industries.

An industry can fall into a wrought thought process which can be a critical liability when viewing problems to be solved in a too-familiar domain. New problems require new thought processes outside of the industry/domain perspectives. Otherwise, we are susceptible to ossified approaches to problem-solving.

Sometimes new participants to an industry will define the problem that is attempting to be solved in a unique way that so-called industry experts will be too quick to define and thereby have a limited perspective on alternative solutions.

As an example, in our retained search industry, in addition to having built large teams for companies in the gas turbine industry, people-moving, robotics, and water safety, we have coached our client-partners ask “what problem are you trying to solve with this hire” versus defaulting to “here is the Job Description”.

More than half of our 40-person team at The Mullings Group are experts from other industries in marketing, media production, entertainment, and software development, who never get on the phone, have driven our search solutions, employer branding and engagement with individuals in the market well outside of classic executive search practices.

The President of TMG Canada, Emily Phair and I discussed our expertise and global expansion and how these philosophies have served our clients and industries well.

Sometimes being too hasty to define the problem we are trying to solve is more dangerous than the well examined problem itself.