I can be cruel to my team sometimes.
Once I hired an intern, and on her first day at work, I sent her a text message with a link to two videos, with a simple instruction: edit these for TikTok, add subtitles and upload it to my TikTok.
I told her I needed it done with two hours.
I knew it would not get done. Two hours later, I stood at her desk, looking serious, holding out my phone to her, asking why the video wasn’t uploaded yet.
She was horrified, thinking that I was going to scream at her.
She eventually mustered up the courage to tell me that the work was not done. I asked her why, and she responded that she had no idea how.
That’s when she received the best education of her life: how to attack a complex problem, and solve it. I outlined everything she could have done:
1. Admit ignorance: I asked her why she did not tell me that she didn’t know how to do the work. She had all the usual answers: she was scared, didn’t want to look stupid, etc.
2. Ask for help: Once she admitted she did know how, it would have been so easy to ask for help. It beats me why people in general just don’t askfor help. I have never asked someone for help, who didn’t help me – something Steve Jobs said, and I’ve experienced too.
3. Frame the problem as a question: In her case, the question would have been: “How do I edit these videos and upload to TikTok?”
4. Do problem analysis: That is, identify the exact problem. Often, the problem is just a small part of the project, not the whole project. Like a toothache which is cause by a tiny, barely-visible cavity. So in this case, the problem was not that she did not know how to use a computer – she
was actually a graduate of my institute, and quite good at coding. She could even build mobile apps. So what was the issue? She never learned video editing. Everything else, she could do like a pro.
5. Solve the problem: Now that we have identified the exact problem, we can address it. A 1 -hour YouTube video tutorial on video editing, got her going with ease.
6. Get feedback: She sent the edited videos to me, but there were issues which I pointed out to her, which she subsequently fixed.
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. In other words, you can solve any problem by breaking it down into small, manageable units. Then, you solve each micro-problem, and the bigger problem looks after itself
Once the intern and I were done with the exercise above, she found that she was no longer dealing with a complex, insurmountable problem; rather, she had to solve a much smaller problem, which was: ‘Identify the best videoediting software, and learn how to use it.’
Question: Do we learn this at school? No, we don’t. Kids are set up for failure because they are given a projects or an assignments, with no idea how to complete them. They are not taught
problem-solving skills, and that put them into a major disadvantage, which stays with them until they become adults.
Most people shy away from doing work, or procrastinate, because they have no idea where to start. Hence, given a complex task, they go into a corner and die quietly.
What I’m trying to say is, most people run from their problems, rather than facing them head-on and solving it. The reason is because they haven’t been equipped with complex problem-solving skills.
Unfortunately, this will put a ceiling on their growth in their careers, and in most other aspects of life.
Remember, there’s something Elon Musk said and this is very interesting. He said, ‘you get paid in direct proportion to the difficulty of problems you solve.’
And this coming from a guy who has solved some major problems and has made himself super wealthy in the process.