What Problem Are You Trying to Solve?

Editor’s note: This essay sits at the heart of Cultivated’s work — how effort turns into value, and why clarity must come before action.

What Problem Are We Trying to Solve?

If you want to be more productive at work, start with a single question:

What problem are we trying to solve?

It sounds almost too simple.
So simple that it barely feels worth writing an article about.
And yet I’m constantly surprised by how rarely it is asked.

A logical next set of questions follows naturally:

How do we know it’s a problem?
Is it a problem worth solving?

This is not semantics. It is orientation.
Because productivity is not about doing more work.

It is about doing the right work.

Busy work and the illusion of progress

In many organisations, people are busy all day long.

Calendars are full. Inboxes overflow. Presentations multiply.

And yet very little seems to change.

In one organisation I worked with, I estimated that 90 percent of staff time was spent producing PowerPoint decks.

When I asked what problem the decks were solving, I never received a clear answer.

People said:

“I was asked to.”
“It feels like the right thing to do.”
“It’s what we always do.”

When I asked the executives the same question, I received equally vague replies.

Everyone was working hard.
Almost no one knew why.

Activity had replaced purpose.

Work without a problem has no finish line

In another organisation, I asked senior leaders why they were investing over £100 million in a digital transformation.

The answers were broad and abstract.

Efficiency. Modernisation. Transformation.

But no one could describe the concrete problems the programme existed to solve.

As a result, the programme drifted.

Lots of work happened.

No one could tell when it was finished.

Because if you do not know what problem you are solving, you can never know when the work is done.

This is one of the quiet failures inside modern organisations:

Plenty of effort.
Very little orientation.

Why this question changes everything

“What problem are we trying to solve?” forces three disciplines into the room:

Evidence — is there really a problem?
Judgement — is it worth solving?
Focus — is this where effort should go?

It turns motion into meaning.

It gives you:

A decision-making filter
A prioritisation tool
A test of value
A way to stop work that should never have started

Without this question, organisations optimise noise.

With it, they begin to shape direction.

How it becomes cultural

When I first started asking this question, people were startled.
They had never been asked to justify work at this level.

Over time, something changed.

People arrived prepared.
Then they began asking the question themselves.

Eventually it became cultural.

Every meeting.
Every initiative.
Every new piece of work.

“What problem are we trying to solve?”

Busy work quietly disappeared.

Not because people worked less — but because they worked with intent.

Problems are not negative

Some people resist the language of problems.

But business is, at heart, the craft of solving problems.

Low sales is a problem — and an opportunity.
Poor retention is a problem — and an opening to improve service.
Weak quality is a problem — and a chance to raise standards.

A good organisation is not one without problems.
It is one that chooses the right ones to work on.

Good problems energise people.

A subtle definition of productivity

Real productivity is not speed.

It is direction.
It is the steady conversion of effort into value.

And that begins, always, with orientation.

Before solutions.
Before plans.
Before action.

Ask the question.

What problem are we trying to solve?

Everything useful follows from there.

This question is not a tactic.

It is a discipline.

And once embedded, it becomes a quiet cultural upgrade — one that saves time, money, and human energy, without a single new tool being installed.