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How much of my job is problem solving?
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Pretty much all of it.
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Sometimes you'll show up on set
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and, you know, something is broken.
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Something has fallen behind on schedule.
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Or you show up to a live event
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and the artist that you're supposed to be covering
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is still getting ready or they're not even there.
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(gentle music)
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You know, first approach is sit down with people,
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understand how they view it,
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and then formulate your own definition
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of the problem and get everybody on board.
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Then you get into an exploratory phase.
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Okay, what are gonna be the key inputs and outputs
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that allow us to make this decision?
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What is gonna be the first version
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that we can do that kinda points us in the right direction,
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even if it's not the perfect one
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so that we can try that out,
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get it in front of the people that we're working with
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and really experiment with those results?
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The first solution that comes to mind
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is not always the best solution.
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So taking the time to take a step back,
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understand what the problem is,
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and then also brainstorm different ideas
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on how to solve it.
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Being able to communicate with your team
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and decide collectively on what the best choice is,
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I think, is the path that we take
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or we try to take most of the times in our company.
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As product managers, we tend to have
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pretty clear ways that we solve problems.
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Really, the flow of things is there's a research phase
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where you try to learn a lot about the space,
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and that's through talking to customers
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or users, reading forums.
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So once you get all that information,
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trying to think about how that relates to the problem.
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Is there, you know, an approach that you want to copy?
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What mistakes are out there
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that other companies have gone through can you learn from?
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Then, really, just writing that as a comprehensive,
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cohesive document and getting everyone on board with it.
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And even though that's how things work
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in product management, I think it's, you know,
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generally applicable to a lot of areas.
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The first step to take
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in problem solving is communication.
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You never want to have anyone assume something
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on your behalf, so just taking the one step ahead
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and making sure you're covering every aspect
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that you might have missed
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and communicating it with the, you know,
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the people above you and the people below you.
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I think that's really important.
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The way that you become a higher up individual
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within an organization is they need to see
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that you're someone where you can solve problems.
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You don't necessarily need to come to the right answer.
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It's more important to show
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that you have the right thought process.
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But if they're not taking a good approach,
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or if they're someone where they're kinda just
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taking a bunch of guesses
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and kinda throwing spaghetti at the wall
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and hoping something sticks,
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if they're not willing to improve on that process,
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then they're going to have difficulties later on.
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In an interview you want to have
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one, I hate to use the word canned, but canned example
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that you can provide pretty quickly
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and that could link to many different things (laughs),
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because that's something you want to demonstrate
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whether they specifically ask
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how you solve problems or not.
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So just always have,
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you know, you don't want it to be something
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where the problem was your fault, ideally.
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And you don't want it to be something
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where you went against policy to solve it, ideally.
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Give an example or two during an interview
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of, okay, here's a problem I faced.
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Here's how I kind of assessed the problem,
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deconstructed the problem,
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and then this is what I did to solve it.
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And then, you know, tell me
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were you successful or not?
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Because, you know, sometimes you're gonna try
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to solve a problem and you won't be successful.
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And, you know, my personal opinion is,
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based on experience, you know,
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you tend to learn as much, if not more, from that
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than you do when you're successful.
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(gentle music)