The reason your last initiative didn’t land probably isn’t what you think it is.
It wasn’t the ideas. It wasn’t the team. It wasn’t the execution. It was the problem statement nobody questioned. And if you’re the one responsible for making that initiative land, this becomes your problem very quickly.
This is one of the biggest patterns we saw while writing Innovation in Action.
Lucy Patterson has spent over a decade helping SMEs and organisations across the UK use human-centred practices to solve problems that matter. She’s a consultant, facilitator, and coach who uses Design Thinking & LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® in the Longevity Economy.
You can learn more about Lucy on her Substack and Beginner’s Guide to Design Thinking Podcast
She’s also a contributor to our new book Innovation in Action. Lucy brings to this conversation field-tested discipline for ensuring the problem on the whiteboard is actually the problem worth solving, and that the people in the room genuinely commit to solving it.
The Problem You Think You Have Isn’t the Real One
Most organisations quickly arrive at a problem statement. Speed feels like clarity. The leadership team has surveyed the customers – the loyal ones, the ones who’ll be generous and agreed on what needs to change.
Lucy’s first move is to ask better questions “I want to make sure that any work I carry out is as productive as possible – so I always do my own quality check to make sure the right question is being asked.”
This is precisely what the Discovering and Understanding phases of the DUCTRI framework is designed for – not confirming what you already suspect, but genuinely learning whether the problem you’ve named is the problem worth solving.
When Lucy was brought in to work with a sports simulation company, the leadership team arrived confident. They had their customer research. They knew their market position. They’d identified their USP.
However, a small number of customer interviews and some careful empathy mapping revealed that the team’s beliefs did not align with their customers’ actual wants.
This isn’t unusual. It’s the norm. The research organisations rely on most heavily tends to confirm what they already suspect rather than surface what they don’t yet know.
The customers they speak to are the ones who are comfortable. The questions they ask are the safe ones.
The result is a problem statement built on assumptions and a set of solutions that solve the wrong thing with great efficiency.
Most teams don’t realise they’re solving the wrong problem – until it’s too late.
The Psychology of These Three Words
Once the real problem is surfaced, how you frame it determines whether your team leans in or holds back.
Lucy’s tool for this is the “How might we…” statement. Not because it’s a design thinking convention worth following, but because of what’s happening neurologically and psychologically when those three words are used accurately.
She draws on the Elephant and Rider principle – the idea that humans operate with two decision-making systems. The elephant is the unconscious: fast, habitual, wired for self-protection. The rider is the conscious mind: deliberate, analytical.
Most problem statements address the rider while leaving the elephant completely unmoved. The room looks engaged. But, the commitment isn’t real.
A well-crafted “How might we…” statement changes that dynamic.“How” signals there’s something worth thinking about. “Might” removes the pressure of a definitive answer – research shows that when people are invited to share opinions rather than deliver verdicts, neural activity increases and honest contribution follows. “We” creates shared ownership – this isn’t handed down, it’s constructed together.
Lucy also says that the calibration matters too. Too narrow and you constrain creative thinking before it starts. Too broad and you lose the problem entirely. Lucy is precise about achieving the balance: language open enough to spark ideas, anchored firmly enough to the real insight that it doesn’t drift.
Want to Go Deeper?
If you want to go deeper, the full conversation with Lucy is live on the my YouTube channel.
Thank you to Lucy for sharing so generously, both in this conversation and in her contribution to Innovation in Action. 🙌
And if this is a challenge you’re facing in your work, this is exactly what Innovation in Action is designed to help with – from framing the right problem through to implementing solutions that actually land.
Practitioner Insights
Before your next project kicks off, run Lucy’s quality check. Ask yourself: is this the right question, or is it the question we’re most comfortable with? They’re rarely the same thing.
When you’re ready to frame the problem, test your HMW statement against two criteria: is it open enough to spark genuine thinking, and anchored enough that it won’t drift? If you can’t answer yes to both, rewrite it before the room fills up.
The teams that solve the right problems aren’t smarter than the ones that don’t. They just ask better questions earlier. That’s a discipline, not a talent – and it’s one worth building deliberately.
See you next week,
Vaughan