by Jeff Lash
If you want to be a bad product manager, don’t worry as much about defining the problem as quickly finding the solution. Problems are usually very obvious and clear, and any time you spend dwelling on it is wasted time that could be spent on solving it. The sooner you start solving the problem, the soon you’ll have it figured out. How hard is it to define a problem, anyway?
If you want to be a good product manager, get a good understanding of the problem before you try and solve it. Product managers and many others unfortunately assume the problem is evident and jump right to solving it. However, ill-defined problems lead to ill-defined solutions.
Albert Einstein purportedly said that, given one hour to save the world, he would spend 55 minutes defining the problem and 5 minutes finding the solution.
