Make peace with problems

Let me paint you a picture of a workshop I facilitated recently.

Fourteen senior leaders crowd around the boardroom table of an artful New-York-loft-style office, surveying a whiteboard with furrowed brows. The background is a hive of activity - 80 clever, busy professionals contributing to planning meetings, drawing detailed designs and solving problems together.

They have big, aspirational goals, these leaders. A passion for sustainability, a deep belief in climate resilience, a dedication to tackling inequality. A conviction in using data and analytics wisely and ethically. The gap between today and the future they desire is cavernous. 

The conversation was insistent, robust and big-picture. How do we build the right skills? Hire the right people? Vet our clients effectively? Contribute more, better, faster? How do we support each other? Partner with others?

Complex problems with complex answers. Tough stuff.

Two years ago, the scene was quite different.

It was a different office, for a start. Smaller, yet with a much larger carbon footprint. There were eight of them, then, set against a backdrop of 40 staff, with far fewer transformational projects on the go. 

The goals were on the whiteboard then, too - but they were smaller, vaguer, and far less community-oriented. Survival was in order before sustainability could be pursued. Which sector should we focus on? Which projects did we want to chase? Which team should do what?

Conversations went in circles as each leader vented their worries, speaking of the difficulties and importance of their functional area and the needs of their people. A shared vision was hard to come by.

What can we learn from this firm?

1. Growth gifts us with better problems to solve.
2. We can't progress our way our of problems.

1. Growth gifts us with better problems to solve.

The two scenes are almost identical in their outline - problems to solve and people trying to solve them. But they couldn't be more different, separated by two years of growth, progress, maturity, experience and momentum.

The problems our (larger, wiser, more confident) executive team is solving this year are much bigger, better problems than two years ago - but they still have problems. Beautiful, important problems. Problems they're excited to solve.

2. We can't progress our way out of problems. 

If we're lucky, our problems get better. They get harder to solve, larger in significance, more meaningful for others and more scaled in impact. But they don't go away.

Problems are the price we pay for a meaningful life. If what we're doing matters, there is no 'done', no 'back to normal', no 'when things settle down.'

When we make peace with problems, we stay open to potential.

What problems are you chasing?

Til next week,

A