During his conversation with Joe Rogan, founder and investor Naval Ravikant was talking about Universal Base Income when he said something interesting…
“I think it’s a non-solution to a non-problem”
Regardless of your opinion on the topic, the thinking behind this statement is interesting. It quickly brings to mind a matrix, which for the sake of simplicity, we can call the Problem-Solution Matrix.
The matrix is built on two key questions
First, is this problem we’re discussing really a problem?
By that I mean two things – is this a problem that needs solving? and can it be solved?
It’s important to begin here because unless a problem is both critical and solvable (within your sphere of influence) there is no use discussing solutions.
Once you’ve established that a problem is truly a problem, the second question pertains to the proposed solution. Namely, does this solution actually solve the problem?
Here again it helps to use follow-up questions to help define what we mean, since this could be fairly subjective in the wrong situation.
When we talk about solving a problem, for the purposes of this conversation, we mean can you say with certainty that it will not make the problem worse? If there are verified examples of a similar solution creating negative blowback in a similar situation,
These two questions produce four possible outcomes.
The first and most rare is the solution that actually solves an important problem. In a perfect world, we would spend all our time here (or perhaps no time here since a perfect world wouldn’t have problems). However, the reality is that these are rarely found.
Then there is the non-solution to a problem. Ideas which simply won’t work. These include bad ideas, but also good ideas that simply can’t be executed on due to resource constraints.
Similarly useless are the solutions to non-problems. These often come from meetings.
And last, there are the non-solutions to non-problems. Large-scale programs are often rife with examples of these. Not only are the solution spaces unrealistic, but they often tackle things that are not really well within the realm of control in the first place.