You have probably heard the tired old phrase “jumping to conclusions”.  An interesting variation involves figuring out the answer before understanding what the problem or issue is.

I call this “jumping to solutions”.  Point of fact, this is built into the human psyche.  Many psychology experiments have been conducted to prove this behaviour is part of humans thinking process.

Of course these experiments were often structured to prove this was the right answer to the question.  Never the less,  my personal observations over time do validate this to be an accurate depiction of most peoples natural tendency.

Building Solutions

Often when we collaborate on defining what we need (i.e., the requirements) our intuitive understanding of the solution comes into play.  This is true in both work and personal context.

This can and often does result in the solution not being what we need and maybe not even addressing/resolving the problem.  Consider the following hypothetical exaggeration (for illustrative purposes).

You have been searching for transportation.  Meeting the needs of your wife and two small children form part of the requirements.  In your mind though the solution needs to be a luxury vehicle.

There probably are some good non-luxury vehicle solutions (and a luxury vehicle is probably not actually a requirement) yet when gathering the requirements somehow they indicate the solution should be a luxury sedan. You force it to be so because you have already decided the solution.

A key driver of arriving at this solution was the fact it was the answer you envisioned even before figuring out what you really needed.

Determining the solution before you know what you really need and want; be careful,  it can be costly and ultimately not meet the real requirements.