An analysis of the 3 problems affecting more and more companies, with increasingly negative effects on productivity worldwide.

We have problems with work, with the company, with the family.

We have problems with our partners, with our children, with our parents.

We have problems with our bodies, with our health, with our diet.

We have problems in practically every area of our lives.

Is this normal? Yes, problems are essential because they show us our path of growth. Without problems we would have perfect systems, relationships and environments, and any form of evolution would therefore be impossible.

What isn't normal are chronic problems. Problems that keep coming back. Problems nobody knows how to solve and that, in the end, become an integral part of our systems.

Chronic problems are the overwhelming proof of an inability to solve problems, the unmistakable sign of so-called "meta-problems."

The prefix "meta" (from the Greek μετα-) means "beyond," "after." It's used to indicate a higher level of abstraction, so the expression "meta-problem" refers to problems that have to do with problems themselves: the inability to see, define and order problems.

Meta-problems lead us to identify problems incorrectly and, as a direct consequence, make it impossible to solve them, turning them into chronic ones.

If you have knee pain, you have a problem.

If you underestimate the knee pain, you have a meta-problem, because you don't see the problem.

If you think the knee pain is the real problem, you have a meta-problem, because you're defining the problem incorrectly (in a way that will lead you to take a painkiller, thinking it's a solution).

If you think skipping a tennis practice is worse than living with the knee pain, you have a meta-problem, because you're getting the priority of your problems wrong.

Meta-problems are problems about problems, that is, problems that show up in how we deal with problems themselves: not seeing them, defining them badly, not knowing how to prioritize them.

Imagine you're a newly hired team member in your company, and your first assignment is to write down every problem you can see.

You have free access to every space, every meeting, every department, the tools and software, every procedure. All you have to do is observe and write down the problems you see and, at the end of the week, hand in a report of all the problems you've identified. That's it.

What errors and inaccuracies do you think you would make in this task?

I've given this exercise countless times to employees, professionals, managers and business owners of companies with anywhere from 1 to 5,000 people, and the most frequent errors I've found are three:

Not all problems are seen.

Important problems are left out because they aren't seen, aren't considered real problems, or people don't want to report them for fear of exposing themselves.
Problems are written down incorrectly.

The problem is written in a dysfunctional, generic and imprecise way: it highlights a cause that is of little or no use in solving the problem.
The order of priority of problems is wrong.

The hierarchy for handling the problems isn't clear: non-priority problems are mistakenly considered priorities and vice versa.

These are the 3 most frequent and widespread meta-problems, both at work and in private life, and they have increasingly negative effects on productivity and well-being worldwide.

Not seeing all the problems, not knowing how to write them down correctly, not being able to identify which problem to handle before the others. How much do these meta-problems weigh, not only on a company's health, but on its very survival?

They weigh as much as all the unsolved problems of a system, which inevitably become chronic.

They weigh as much as the unawareness, superficiality and ignorance of whoever runs a system.

They weigh as much as living with a problem for a long time, so long that it becomes an integral part of your life.

Identifying, defining and ordering problems should be the first 3 skills to always check in any team member, especially if they're a manager.

Identifying, defining and ordering problems should be the practical tests that every candidate takes in job interviews.

Think about the impression a new candidate would make if, from their very first days on the job, they could clearly list all the problems affecting their department, write them down so precisely that the solution became obvious too, and, finally, provide concrete evidence that the order in which they listed them is exactly the order in which they should be handled.

You wouldn't need any other credentials to know you're looking at a strong hire. These abilities are among those that best predict the value of a team member and a manager¹.

Even accumulated experience and technical skills aren't as relevant: it's the ability to describe the problem that best distinguishes team members who create value from those who don't create real value².

There are team members who solve problems and team members who maintain them. Having team members who lack the skills to see, define and order problems means having team members who, over time, learn to live with problems, to normalize them and to keep them going.

Whether we're talking about a marriage, a company or a soccer team, correctly identifying the problems of a system means being able to see all of them, write them down precisely and confidently identify which one needs to be solved first.

How many problems affecting your company are you not seeing?

Would you know how to write a problem down in a precise and useful way?

Reading a list of problems, are you sure you could say, without hesitation, which one needs to be handled before all the others?

The usefulness, correctness and priority of a problem are entirely objective factors, and the lack of an effective method for defining them leads a very high percentage of companies and professionals to have these 3 meta-problems: not seeing problems, defining them imprecisely and investing in solving secondary problems while neglecting the priority ones.

The negative consequences of these meta-problems aren't limited to making a system's problems chronic; they also include 3 other effects.

Negative effect no. 1: Frustration over recurring problems

The frustration that comes from failing to identify problems correctly leads to drops in performance and in mutual trust across the whole team³.

What causes the most stress in a company, just as in a marriage, isn't isolated problems (however big they are), but chronic problems, the ones that keep happening (however small they are).

It has been shown that it's the repetition of the same problem (even a small one) that does the most damage to a system and a relationship, not the intensity of a single event⁴.

The longitudinal research of John Gottman and Robert Levenson showed that couples rarely split up because they ran into one big problem, but much more often because of small frictions repeated over time⁵.

In Gottman's reading, a substantial share of couples' conflicts is never resolved: these are the so-called "perpetual problems," which at best you learn to live with.

And the same thing happens in a business context: the most harmful stress, contrary to what logic might suggest, isn't the stress that comes from intense, isolated problems but the stress that comes from small unsolved problems that therefore show up constantly and become chronic and recurring⁶.

Negative effect no. 2: Misalignment from seeing different problems and/or giving them different priorities

Not having a proven, effective method for identifying, writing down and ordering problems leads to misalignment between the team members and partners of a system: people see different problems and give different priorities to the same problems.

Martin Seligman talks about "learned helplessness" (persistent frustration): when people are misaligned on problems and disagree about their causes, they experience chronic frustration and a sense of powerlessness⁷.

Meetings often start late: for some it's a problem, for others it isn't.

Salespeople aren't accurate when filling in their reports: everyone considers it a problem, but on a scale of 1 to 10, for some it rates a 10 and for others a 3.

A couple has stopped saying "thank you" to each other for the little things: for one of them it's a minor annoyance, for the other it's unbearable.

Different views of the problems lead to different overall views, different goals, different priorities. A collaboration between people who disagree on the problems they see will always be unproductive and subject to strong tensions.

Negative effect no. 3: Wasted resources and loss of trust in whoever runs the system

Solving a problem means investing time in meetings and projects, often while reaching for your wallet. Without a proven method, you realize that the problem you solved wasn't actually the priority only after the fact: once the meeting is over and the money is spent.

When it becomes clear that effort went into a false problem, and that the real priority problem was neglected (because you realize the situation hasn't substantially changed), this creates frustration in the team and a loss of trust in whoever runs the system⁸.

The next time an improvement is proposed, there won't be the same enthusiasm and trust as before: getting the problem wrong creates a presumption of incompetence and produces misalignment, frustration and demotivation.

As organizational psychologist Denise Rousseau has shown, when expectations don't match, people perceive a breach of the psychological contract*, with a resulting increase in distrust and misalignment in the work group⁹.

* The set of expectations, beliefs and promises – neither written nor formalized – that govern the mutual exchange between an individual and the organization they work for. In practice, it's the unwritten part that complements the employment contract.

The huge difference between Problem Solving and Problem Noting

You're now aware of how relevant the skills of seeing, writing down and ordering problems are to the survival and evolution of any system, and also of how hard they are to apply without a well-proven method.

Getzels and Csikszentmihalyi's studies on problem finding, conducted with art school students, observed that only some of the participants stop to formulate the problem before trying to solve it¹⁰.

In a series of studies conducted in the 1970s and 1980s, the same problem was given to different people, and two different reactions were observed:

Some went straight to Problem Solving (the majority): they started by looking for a solution to the problem, without analyzing or questioning it.
Some did Problem Finding* first (the minority): they explored the problem at length, improving their understanding of it, and only after agreeing that they had understood it did they start working to solve it.

* Problem Finding is only one part of the Problem Noting process.

It's as if you asked a group of carpenters to build a wooden house and most of them, instead of first working on a plan and figuring out exactly what, how and where to cut, started cutting right away.

The well-known saying "measure twice, cut once" suggests the wisest approach: to shoot well, you need to take good aim.

In the experiments cited, however, most participants don't follow this approach and set out to solve the given problem immediately, even if they haven't understood it or aren't sure it's the priority. Only a small group checks and analyzes the problem more carefully before starting the solving process.

As further confirmation of which approach is better, later research following these experiments found that the few individuals who analyzed the problem and deepened their understanding of it before trying to solve it had, a few years later, higher productive performance, more significant careers, and reported higher and more stable levels of happiness¹¹.

You could say we're more interested in eliminating problems than in understanding them. As if removing a problem from our sight were more an impulse than a rational thought.

Problem Noting is a process aimed at correctly identifying all the problems of a system and putting them in order of priority. Problem Noting is much more complete than Problem Finding, and it includes three specific activities:

Seeing all the problems of a system
Writing down the problems of a system correctly, spelling out all the essential elements of each problem so that the solution also becomes clear
Putting the problems of a system in order of priority, so that it's clear which problem is most urgent

The priority isn't the ability to solve problems, but the ability to identify them. What you don't see, you can't solve, and only what you see clearly has a chance of being solved.

A team member with no particular skill other than correctly identifying problems can make an enormous difference in a company.

Conversely, a team member with great experience and very high skills will bring very little value to a system if they lack this ability.

The absence of Problem Noting skills in a system doesn't just have the obvious negative effect of keeping it stuck in the same symptomatic dynamics; it also fuels the spread of a harmful mindset and habits that are highly damaging to the system's productivity.

In companies where Problem Noting isn't practiced, there's a high probability of finding these dysfunctional behaviors:

Lack of accountability, the tendency not to take responsibility for your own actions, your own mistakes and the problems you cause.

The "passing the buck" dynamic spreads when the practice of Problem Noting isn't widespread or, in any case, isn't done following a proven, effective method.

Applying a method for identifying problems makes it easier to accept your own mistakes and, therefore, to take responsibility for your actions more calmly.

When identifying problems becomes normal in a company, problems stop being something to run from, hide and judge, and become something to look for, bring to light and take ownership of.

The habit of Problem Noting cultivates a mindset that sees problems as opportunities for growth rather than as events to fear and reject.
A tendency to criticize, putting other people's problems/shortcomings first.

Getting used to considering other people's problems first is a habit that gradually leads you to stop considering your own¹².

You notice a colleague arriving a few minutes late to a meeting and don't see your own delay of a few weeks in delivering a project.

When you notice the speck in someone else's eye and pay no attention to the biblical plank in your own, you're certainly not applying a Problem Noting method.

Identifying a problem correctly trains the habit of always giving priority to your own shortcomings over other people's. And in a system where everyone talks about their own shortcomings first, the level of productivity will be completely different from a system where everyone talks about other people's shortcomings first.
A code of silence and low assertiveness in communicating what isn't working.

The absence of Problem Noting more easily leads to a "pressure cooker" effect. Problems are kept inside, hidden and concealed, until the pressure of their effects becomes too high and is released in an eruption of anger or in a clean, often irreparable break.

The code of silence is the condition that leads people to keep problems to themselves, not to share them with the people directly involved, until they're so exhausted and disappointed that they're no longer willing to talk about them.

Problem Noting in a company makes bringing a problem to the surface a normal practice, unconnected to penalties or personal interests. That's why it's an excellent antidote to the code of silence.

Problems often go unreported for fear of damaging relationships with the people directly involved or to protect someone's position. A methodical habit of Problem Noting normalizes identifying problems and gradually eradicates every form of hiding them.
The problem-spreading effect.

Without a widespread, proven method of Problem Noting, the people in a system tend to talk more about problems and solve fewer of them.

Talking more about a problem, and with more people, amplifies its effects, spreads false information¹³ and worsens the company climate.

If the people in a system talk about the problems they see with people other than the one directly involved, or than whoever can solve them, they feed and inflate the problem even without meaning to. This behavior stems precisely from an inadequate habit of Problem Noting.
Perfectionism and nitpicking, seeing ever smaller and more insignificant problems.

Without the habit of Problem Noting, some people keep lowering their standards until they're completely indifferent to problems, while others keep raising them to a dysfunctional level, starting to give weight to so-called "nitpicks."

A manager starts seeing problems everywhere and is never satisfied with their team members. They react to someone being 2 minutes late the way they would to catching a thief red-handed. They treat an isolated oversight as a personal affront. This is perfectionism and nitpicking.

Losing touch with the concepts of "relevance" and "priority" of problems means presuming that all problems are equally important and that all of them must be solved immediately.

Even though this attitude leads to identifying more problems, it turns out to do more harm than good, because it spreads rigidity, irrationality and narrow-mindedness.
Resistance to change.

Without a good Problem Noting method, problems inevitably tend to be seen as something threatening, because they imply change and uncertainty.

This automatically leads people to hide or distort them for fear they'll change the situation for the worse.

Problem Noting gradually teaches people to see problems as positive changes toward evolution and growth, which is why in a system where Problem Noting is well established there's less resistance to change and more openness to it.

In an effective system, none of these behaviors is accepted. When every person has a suitable method for identifying problems, a productive mindset can't help but take root, and it shows in constant, visible evolution.

But why is it so rare to find a methodical habit of Problem Noting in a company?

First, because of a lack of skills in doing it, and second, because of the presumption that you can identify all the problems even without a method.

The mistake of believing you can see all the problems

Have you ever tried writing down the problems you see in a given context?

I urge you to do it: write down the first 5 problems that come to mind in an area that concerns you and that you know very well: your company, your relationship, one of your team members.

When you've done it, read the problems you've written and ask yourself how confident you are that you've identified all the problems, that you've defined them in the best (most useful) way possible, and that you know which one to tackle first in order of priority.

Everyone can see some problems, everyone can write problems down somehow, and every problem is real and important in the eyes of whoever writes it. And yet identifying problems is an activity done mostly instinctively and subjectively, based on personal expectations and interests, corrupted by emotions and constantly influenced by mental "errors."

In a long body of research conducted between the 1960s and 1980s, economist and psychologist Herbert Simon showed that the main problem in problem solving is defining the problem¹⁴, and that people tend to oversimplify, distort and adopt imprecise versions of the problem.

Karl Duncker and Stellan Ohlsson talk about "systematic failures," and found that most people fail in their aims, even when simple solutions are within reach, because they can't see the real problem¹⁵.

It has been widely shown that the mind isn't designed to look for the right problem, but rather to try to confirm what it already thinks¹⁶, and this often leads us to see the most convenient problem, not the most useful one.

This mechanism of the mind explains well why, even though people know they don't have a proven method for identifying problems, they still tend to be very sure of their own assessments.

We rely on our own minds because, in some way, they do see problems, and for most people this is enough to consider the mind an effective tool for identifying problems (albeit mistakenly).

Daniel Kahneman, author of the well-known book Thinking, Fast and Slow, made it clear that the same problem framed in different ways produces different decisions¹⁷, and therefore different solutions.

Karl Weick coined the term "sensemaking" (literally, "making sense") for the dynamic that occurs in a company when there isn't a single reading of the problem, but many different versions of it.

That alone should be inconceivable to a business owner, because it implies a total lack of method in identifying problems. A situation of permanent misalignment that sometimes ends in conflict. A bleak feeling of loneliness that comes from feeling like the only one who sees the real problems.

If you showed your car to 10 expert mechanics and all 10 found different problems, what would you think of those mechanics? In all likelihood, that at least 9 of them are incompetent.

So why should it be any different for another system, such as your company?

There shouldn't be different, subjective views of the problems in a system. There should be a single, universal, agreed view of the problems: all the "mechanics" should agree on the priority cause to be solved and describe it in the same way.

To sum up: you need a method to identify, write down and order problems correctly, without falling into inaccuracies, cognitive errors and distortions. A method so well proven that it leads all members of a system to identify the same problems, write them down in the same way and give them the same priority.

This is the starting point of every system that thrives.

Key insight:

The biggest problem for whoever runs a company is the inability to identify, define and order the problems of their own company.

How do you increase the chances of gathering, understanding and ordering all the problems of a system?

The only way to avoid heuristics, biases* and other distorting factors is to use a proven method that, through precise questions, requires identifying all the problems of a system, defining them correctly and putting them in order.

Our research shows that, without a method with these characteristics, it's very unlikely, if not impossible, for those who run a system to be precise, clear-headed and effective in identifying that system's problems**.

What the people running a company identify rarely matches the real priority problems, because it's clouded and influenced by cognitive biases, emotions and prejudices.

As the result of more than 15 years of research***, focused on analyzing the problems of hundreds of companies across different regions, sizes and industries, we designed a dedicated Problem Noting course focused precisely on the method that resolves the mistake of believing you can see all the problems.

The Problem Noting course lasts one day and can be attended online via live streaming.

In this course you gain autonomy and independence in identifying all the problems of a system, defining them correctly and putting them in order of priority.

The course is designed for managers, business owners and professionals, and enables you to:

Build the methodical habit of identifying the problems of a system (a company or a department)
Correctly define the key elements of a problem (effects, causes, people involved, etc.)
Give a problem the right priority, without falling into faulty logical assessments that lead you to consider a problem a priority when it isn't, or vice versa.

The course aims to instill the methodical habit of Problem Noting and, as a result, to:

increase the number of problems identified,
improve the accuracy with which problems are described
create a more reliable priority hierarchy of problems
align the view of problems across all the company's team members

The course indirectly helps reduce and eliminate the dysfunctional behaviors associated with the lack of this habit:

Lack of accountability (passing the buck)
A tendency to criticize (putting other people's problems before your own)
A code of silence (keeping problems hidden out of fear or personal interest)
The problem-spreading effect (more talk and fewer solutions)
Perfectionism and nitpicking (seeing ever smaller and more insignificant problems)
Resistance to change (preferring the security of standing still to the uncertainty of evolving)

The course is limited to a maximum of 20 participants per session.

The registration fee includes:

Participation in the course via live streaming
A kit of tools for identifying problems in your company (delivered digitally)
A survey for identifying problems in your company (delivered digitally)
A 1-hour individual post-course coaching session to create a correct, ordered list of your company's current problems and define a customized resolution plan (held online)

The course director and instructor is Marco Belzani, an experienced researcher in personal and business organization and productivity. Since 2007 he has been engaged in research in education, organization and systemization. In 2019 he launched a training program for business owners and managers aimed at gradually implementing key tools, skills and habits for running systems that deliver steadily growing results and support people's development, happiness and peace of mind.

* Cognitive biases (or simply biases) are errors of judgment that the human brain makes automatically in order to make quick decisions. These errors are generated by "heuristics," mental shortcuts that alter the perception of reality.

** An exception applies to those who have the knowledge, skills and appropriate method to correctly identify all the symptoms, analyze them, write them down correctly and put them in order of priority.

*** The research focused on studying the relationships between problems within a system and the proven hierarchies in stable business systems and in natural systems.

The methodology was essentially based on highlighting the differences between the problems reported by company managers and the problems gathered by our team by applying methods for identifying and analyzing symptoms.

Bibliographic notes:

¹ Weick K. (1995). Sensemaking in Organizations.

Klein G. (1998). Sources of Power.

² Simon (1973). The structure of ill-structured problems.

³ Reason, J. (1990). Human error. Cambridge University Press.

⁴ McEwen, B. S. (1998). Protective and damaging effects of stress mediators. New England Journal of Medicine, 338(3), 171–179.

McEwen, B. S. (2000). Allostasis and allostatic load: Implications for neuropsychopharmacology. Neuropsychopharmacology, 22(2), 108–124.

Kanner, A. D., Coyne, J. C., Schaefer, C., & Lazarus, R. S. (1981). Comparison of two modes of stress measurement: Daily hassles and uplifts versus major life events. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 4(1), 1–39.

⁵ Gottman, J. M. (1994). What Predicts Divorce? The Relationship Between Marital Processes and Marital Outcomes. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Gottman, J. M., & Levenson, R. W. (1992). Marital processes predictive of later dissolution. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63(2), 221–233.

These two works document the "cascade model" of marital dissolution: it's recurring patterns of negative interaction, not a single event, that predict separation. The 69% figure for "perpetual" problems, widely attributed to Gottman, doesn't appear in these works: the Gottman Institute reports it without citing a study, and it could not be verified against a primary source. For this reason it isn't cited in the text.

⁶ Karasek, R. A. (1979). Job demands, job decision latitude, and mental strain: Implications for job redesign. Administrative Science Quarterly, 24(2), 285–308.

Maslach, C., & Jackson, S. E. (1981). The measurement of experienced burnout. Journal of Occupational Behavior, 2(2), 99–113.

⁷ Seligman, M. E. P. (1975). Helplessness.

⁸ Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2002). Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation. American Psychologist.

Cyert, R. M., & March, J. G. (1963). A Behavioral Theory of the Firm.

When people have different interpretations of the problem → they develop different goals.

Weick, K. E. (1995). Sensemaking in Organizations (in organizations, people construct "meanings." If the problem is interpreted differently, different realities emerge, resulting in misalignment and coordination errors.

Ross, L. (1977). The intuitive psychologist and his shortcomings.

⁹ Rousseau, D. M. (1989). Psychological and implied contracts in organizations Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal.

¹⁰ Getzels, J. W., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1976). The Creative Vision: A Longitudinal Study of Problem Finding in Art.

Getzels, J. W. (1975). Problem Finding and the Inventiveness of Solutions.

¹¹ Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.

¹² Ross, L. (1977). The intuitive psychologist and his shortcomings: Distortions in the attribution process.

Pronin, E., Lin, D. Y., & Ross, L. (2002). The bias blind spot: Perceptions of bias in self versus others.

Mezulis, A. H., Abramson, L. Y., Hyde, J. S., & Hankin, B. L. (2004). Is there a universal positivity bias in attributions? A meta-analytic review of individual, developmental, and cultural differences in the self-serving attributional bias.

¹³ A multitude of scientific experiments show that communicative redundancy about a problem inevitably leads to distortion of the original problem. To name some of the best known:

Bartlett, F. C. (1932). Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology.

Allport, G. W., & Postman, L. J. (1947). The Psychology of Rumor.

Bergman, E. T., & Roediger, H. L. (1999). Can Bartlett’s repeated reproduction experiments be replicated?.

Roediger, H. L., Meade, M. L., Gallo, D. A., & Olson, K. R. (2014). Bartlett revisited: Direct comparison of repeated reproduction and serial reproduction techniques.

Ost, J., Udell, J., Dear, S., Zinken, J., Blank, H., & Costall, A. (2022). The serial reproduction of an urban myth: revisiting Bartlett’s schema theory. Memory, 30(6), 775-783. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2022.2059514

¹⁴ Simon, H. A. (1973). The structure of ill-structured problems.

Simon, H. A. (1957). Models of Man.

¹⁵ Duncker, K. (1945). On problem-solving.

Ohlsson, S. (1992). Information-processing explanations of insight and related phenomena.

¹⁶ Wason, P. C. (1960). On the failure to eliminate hypotheses in a conceptual task.

Wason, P. C. (1968). Reasoning about a rule.

¹⁷ Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1981). The framing of decisions and the psychology of choice.

Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow.