5 steps to reframe a problem
"Without a well defined problem, there is no strategy”, said Richard Rumelt in Good Strategy Bad Strategy.
In this piece, we’ll cover some of the steps we think are important to help you reframe a problem. But first, you may be asking…
Why is it important to reframe the problem?
Because without a defined problem to solve, you can’t work out if your strategy is the best way to solve it. And usually the problem doesn’t come defined in a brief. Sometimes problems get presented as symptoms (e.g. people don’t buy from us).
Imagine a client comes to you asking us to write a strategy to get “10-year-olds don’t play tennis”. The obvious thing to do is to think about how you might want to get them to play tennis, but you still don’t have a problem – just a symptom of the problem.
So imagine if, through research and thinking about it, you concluded that 10-year-olds don’t play tennis because “tennis belongs to the world of parents and therefore does not have any social value for their friends”… now you’ve got a reframed problem you can solve!
See the difference?
How can you start reframing a problem?
There are 5 simple steps you can start taking to bring some structure to reframing a problem.
Start right. Don’t jump to a solution, trying to get to ideas or tactics. Start with the objective you’re given from a client, and then ask yourself: what is in the way of achieving this? Defining these barriers usually gets you closer to defining the real problems.
Think like a doctor. A doctor doesn’t just give you symptoms (your leg hurts), they give you causes too (because you strained it). The problem you’re after is the cause. Remember the tennis example: the problem isn’t that 10-year-olds don’t play enough tennis (symptom), it’s that tennis feels from the world of parents and therefore has no social value for a kid (cause).
Standardise. Most problems are either at a brand level (e.g. low awareness/consideration), product (e.g. taste cues are low), category (e.g. low affinity to overall category) or culture (e.g. change in occasions around a specific category). This will help you standardise the problem and help you reframe things more efficiently.
Word it right. The way you word it is super important. This is what you can keep coming back to in briefings, conversations with clients and even writing your own decks or producing your own strategic thinking. Remember: “X is happening because of Y” is your template, now make it tangible and juicy. The level 9,000 of this is when the client starts using that language when speaking to you!
Ask for previous knowledge. Ask your colleagues if they’ve worked on the category. You’d be surprised how often “new problems” have really already been faced, or solved, before! Everything is a remix, right?
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