Continuing with our previous post’s theme of problem solving, business leaders often find themselves with these kinds of difficult decisions: significant problems or opportunities versus proposed solutions that cost too much, take too long to implement, or carry adverse unintended consequences of their own.

Here are some examples:

• A large chemical company had opportunities to increase sales by $60 million if they could expand production capacity, but the capital investments would cost $20-$30 million and would take 18 months to implement.
• A data processing company received too many complaints about quality but the market and margins would not bear additional costs for ‘QC.’
• The manufacturing company needed to cut raw material costs without weakening its suppliers.
• Breakthrough technology that cost too much to be commercially viable.
•  Centralizing the Purchasing function had reduced responsiveness and efficiency but when it was decentralized, it lacked sufficient controls and access to expertise.

In most problem solving situations, the first idea is the barrier to the second idea. Steve Jobs hit the nail on the head, observing, “When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there.”

In every example cited above, the people working to solve the problem had stopped at the first idea. Once an idea was developed the attention shifted toward evaluating the return on investment and lining up support rather than improving or replacing the idea with something better, faster, less expensive, or more effective. They stopped too soon!

The best idea is almost always hidden somewhere behind the first idea. In order to arrive at the best idea, you have to keep going. As Steve Jobs observed, “… if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can often arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions.”