Lesson#1: Most businesses don’t have a real problem Statement

What I learned after Observing 100+ Small & Mid-sized Business Lesson#1: Most businesses don’t have a real problem Statement

After observing these businesses closely across different sectors, stages and ownership styles, one pattern appeared again and again.

“Most of them believe that they know their problems but in reality, They don’t”

Let’s find out their tone:

Sales are too low

Marketing is not working

Sir you don’t know but Competition is killing us, and there is no way out

Customers are price sensitive

Employees don’t give their 100%

(Find out which one is yours)

If I say precisely, these are not problems, these are just symptoms of underlying problems those could be untraceable with the perception of yours.

These symptoms create noise and clutter your mind, as the same time, real problem is something which you can identify, diagnose, question and solve.

Here I must say, “Don’t start solving before understanding”

Let’s understand the cost of a weak problem statement

When a business doesn’t clearly define its problems:

1. Efforts increases but result don’t
2. Teams work harder but lacking co-ordination
3. Decisions become reactive rather being responsive
4. Money gets spent on tools instead of real brain-storming

What a real problem looks like

1. We are attracting the wrong customer segment
2. Decision making is centralized and causing execution delay
3. We scaled operations before analyzing demands
4. Our values and policies are unclear, so price becomes the point of discussion
5. Our business is management led instead being process driven

These may hurt EGO but solve real problems

I simple test I have seen work

Where confusion is high, I encourage Owners, to ask these three questions:

1. What exactly is happening? (Only facts, no emotions, no presumptions, no predictions)
2. Why it’s happening repeatedly?
3. What assumptions are we protecting because it once worked?

The moment assumptions are questioned; clarity appears.

The learning: If you don’t define the real problem, your business will keep solving wrong ones

My Next article on the series: Why hard work increases when direction disappears

“Pure experience, no Gyan” business writeups and articles

Thanks for reading

Anupam Jaiswal