On finding focus: part 2 / 3
How empathy opens our eyes to defining meaningful problems where we can actively participate.
This is a three part series introducing Meaningful Transformational Focus* - a simple process to help individuals, teams and businesses to get fired-up about impactful issues.
Explore future potential through problem-definition
Part one described how ideas often die young because of distraction, where a staggering ≈5% of our total brain capacity is occupied by digital noise. To dial down noise needs a mindset shift to focus on others. Empathy is a winning strategy in a lost world.
What many people get wrong about empathy, especially design professionals, is that it isn’t about problem-solving.
Demonstrating empathy is about counselling and coaching, empowering people to understand, articulate and solve their own problems.
Problem-solving for others leads to magic thinking, when a person’s expectations are not in tune with their ability or capacity to progress, which in turn leads to disappointment. Enough disappointments lead to disengagement and the worst case.
Magic thinking ends with fatalism.
Fatalism means that a person believes they have little or no control over their lives.
Magical thinking is the reason why there are so many sports supplements and miracle diets. They all shout about solving your feelings, and it works. Except 99% of them don’t work. Motivation is about feelings and feelings come and go. Motivation can’t be relied upon for our problems. Discipline is a decision you can make, no matter how you feel.
“A problem well-stated is a problem half-solved.”
Discipline is a well-stated problem.
Do you want to feel magical and then feel like a failure, or do you want meaningful transformation? OK then, so let’s talk about discipline.
Remco Evenepoel, a 24 year old elite cyclist, had a big problem. He had just suffered a horrific crash in 2020 after sliding over the edge of a bridge, falling 30 feet to a ledge below, fracturing his pelvis and contusing his lung. Who can return from that?
Remco did. After two years of intensive physio, recovery and retraining he finished third in the 2024 Tour de France and won two Olympic golds in Paris. He is viewed as one of the most meticulous and disciplined riders in the sport.
Coaches help athletes win through developing their resilience, training them to manage emotions and to hone their coping skills, knowing that pain and accepting pain, is best way to succeed.
The elite in sports use discipline to focus on pushing beyond their natural physical talent by adopting a winning mindset.
Embracing discipline as a foundation is Meaningful Transformative Focus.
The “presenting” problem that a client expresses to me is often the experience of unwanted symptoms or issues they want to get rid of.
That’s normal. Symptoms are great at alerting us to the fact something is wrong. Unwanted behaviours cause difficulties that, sooner or later, get us to seek answers. However, the causal problem is usually something different, something not as easy to describe and therefore more profound.
Problem definition is diagnosing the situation so that the focus is on the real problem and not on its symptoms.
“‘Fall in love with the problem, not the idea’”
There are endless ways to define a problem and almost as many resources to guide you.
If there’s a formula it is distance divided by speed, i.e. TIME.
You have to invest time.
You have to listen actively, analyse forensically, then apply your expertise to conclude what is actually happening. A few pointers to think about:
What is the basic need being expressed?
What are all the related symptoms and issues being described?
What are the issues that can’t be described?
Who or what is being affected?
What is the desired outcome?
What is your hypothesis about why this is happening?
Develop a short problem statement that summarises the gap between the current state and the desired outcome, including what you conclude is the causal problem.
Part 3 will help you get fired-up about the issues you care about.
*This framework was inspired by the Massive Transformational Purpose created and distributed by the Singularity University for the purpose of enabling moonshot business ideas. As an advocate in using and adapting open-source materials that democratise benefits for a wide range of users I don’t shy away from adapting things I find, especially if the result is aiding a crystal clear vision in a world thick with the fog of distraction.