Issue 29

“Bring solutions, not problems” has a hidden cost

We were in the midst of a large digital transformation project that we had pitched to upper management. They saw the strategic need and funded our work.

Some stakeholders were aligned but others wanted to keep working the way they had—but in a new tool. Process was slow as we uncovered the root problems to solve and gained buy-in.

At some point, upper management became impatient (rightly so, I’d add) with the progress and started putting pressure on the project team to move faster. The easy way to do that was to implement the old ways of working in our new tool. While that would check the box for upper management on deliverables, it wouldn’t address the strategic need driving the transformation.

The business was forcing us to deliver something, and it increasingly looked like we’d recreate the same problems we set out to solve—or create new ones.

We weren’t really in an argument about tools or timelines, though. Our tolerances for uncertainty were not aligned.

The hidden assumption we don’t talk about

This push to deliver recycled problems left me in a position where I was voicing concerns without having solutions yet. Eventually upper management sent feedback that essentially was “You can’t keep raising concerns if you don’t bring solutions too.”

I realize now that many managers get dialed in on results and therefore harbor hidden assumptions. One assumption is that concerns must arrive fully formed. Another assumption is that discomfort must come with a plan.

Neither assumption is fair, but I think they are pretty common.

Two stages of signal

When I voiced uncertainty about parts of the project, I was reacting to early signals. I’d seen a flash of risk or recognized a glimpse of a pattern that triggered concern, but I couldn’t fully articulate it yet.

Businesses and their systems usually can’t handle early signals, or pattern recognition, or feelings, or uncomfortable questions. They want evidence, framing, and alternatives. They want certainty.

I think these are really two stages of signal: early signal and decision-ready signal.

The idea of early signals here is set in the context of a team. Early signals are a team responsibility. They depend on psychological safety. This is not a license for external second-guessing. We’re not talking about drive-by critiques. Signal quality depends on proximity, expertise, accountability, and shared goals.

Early signals aren’t an alternative to decisions. They’re inputs before decisions harden.

Healthy systems (that includes people, organizations, and tools) create space between sensing and explaining—between certainty and uncertainty.

Why early signals often sound negative

The feedback that I encountered, while not entirely unwarranted, reveals the kind of negative sentiment that is common when systems don’t tolerate early signals.

Early signals can set off their own series of reactions, because:

• Early signals are raw. They lack narrative polish. Indeed, they may lack substantive words and diagrams and metaphors.
• Early signals resist timelines. Projects have timelines, and teams and individual reviews live and die by quarterly plans. Early signals often say “Hold up!”
• Early signals create friction. It may appear that almost everyone is aligned and that consensus and momentum is building. Early-signal concerns ask hard questions that lead to difficult conversations. The questions may be hard to find answers for.
• Early signals trigger defensiveness. Even if not intended as such, early-signal concerns might be perceived as an attack on individuals or teams.

Early-signal concerns are uncertainty, and businesses crave certainty.

When systems can’t tolerate uncertainty

When I got that “bring solutions, not problems” feedback, a couple things happened. First, I looked for ways to reframe my feedback and find a bias toward action. That’s good. Second, I raised fewer concerns. That’s bad.

It’s an example of how uncertainty doesn’t disappear. It gets displaced.

• Uncertainty gets absorbed by people. Individuals self censor like I did. Individuals carry the risk on their own instead of offloading it to the team for mitigation.
• Uncertainty gets converted into false certainty. We’ve all seen groupthink where teams build overconfident timelines when the individual members know it’s not realistic. Or maybe you’ve seen teams that make narratives that are too tidy.
• Uncertainty gets externalized as conflict or blame. When this happens, the messenger gets shot, strategists are “blockers,” and experts are “out of touch” or “too theoretical.”

Ambiguity feels irresponsible. Leaders choose shipping prematurely over stepping back to examine questions. (Of course, shipping to learn is great. I’m learning this like never before over the last few months.)

It often feels like inertia favors wrong-but-clear over uncertain-but-honest.

The cost of forcing certainty

When inertia takes over and displaces uncertainty, there are real consequences at stake.

• Bad decisions are made confidently.
• Problems are overlooked and resurface larger later.
• The people who see early signals become disenfranchised, and they burn out.
• Institutional memory fades, and lessons go unlearned.

What if systems sat with uncertainty?

We’ve looked at how uncertainty gets displaced. Now let’s briefly consider what systems could do with uncertainty.

Whether content systems, design frameworks, product roadmaps, or management styles, imagine if “not yet” was a legitimate response, weak signals could be recorded and explored, and flagging signals was recognized as a separate skill from deciding or solving.

In content work, uncertainty can exist in many facets, such as:

• Models: How granular should our structure be? Will the model enable the experiences the business needs—now and in the future?
• Taxonomy: Do we need this specificity now or is it overkill?
• Editorial authority: Is this content valuable? Is it ready to be published? Has it served its purpose?
• Strategy: Will this strategy deliver the intended outcomes? Do we know what we need to know? What are the unknown unknowns? (There's a Youtube video about unknown unknowns. Look it up—not linking to avoid getting flagged as spam.)

Do content tools accommodate uncertainty in these areas? Do they drive us toward resolving our concerns? Do we have frameworks to fall back on? Does leadership give us the leeway to address early-signal concerns?

Sometimes we see job descriptions for content strategists (and other roles) that call for being comfortable with ambiguity. Maybe surfacing—and learning to solve—early-signal concerns is part of high-level strategic roles.

There is no tidy wrapup

As someone working in high-level strategic roles, I know there are things I can do to improve my vision, synthesis, and delivery. I can run pre-mortems with teams to identify potential failure points.

Obviously, delay can be problematic, but sometimes it’s what the doctor ordered.

In my emergency services life, I’ve learned that acting fast under uncertainty can be dangerous. There’s a concept of a tactical pause, and maybe that’s something to bring into my tech sector life.

But I suspect that there’s this human factor in which sometimes you have to stand back and let people make their own mistakes because that’s how we learn best.

What have you seen in your career? Where does uncertainty go when organizations and tooling can’t handle it?

​Why designers sound negative (and why that’s a good thing)
​by Andy Budd

Related reading

• ​Why designers sound negative (and why that’s a good thing)​
• ​Abby Covert’s comments on The Sensemakers Club​

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