Managers are often promoted to senior roles based on their ability to fix problems. However, as enterprise leaders, they must focus less on solving problems and more on defining which problems the organization should be tackling.

This means having the willingness and patience to step back and ask, "What problem are we trying to solve?" They are stuck in problem-fixing mode. But it's not enough to simply apply effort; you must work on the right thing. One hour solving the right problem beats ten hours on the wrong one. This means accurately identifying and framing the problem, need or challenge.

Say you have an idea to help improve customer service — a new chatbot feature for the company website. But what aspects of customer service need to be improved?

What need would the chatbot fulfill? Is customer service even the issue, or is service lacking because of other failures across broader company operations, such as product flaws or outdated technology? You could easily blow thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours on a chatbot that does nothing to improve customer service because it's not relevant to the real problem.

Instead of considering interdependencies and broader patterns and exploring their implications, this approach views the problem as a one-off situation. So, we need to shift from this narrow thinking to broad thinking.

Broad thinking starts with employing three behaviors. First, spend time following your thoughts in an exploratory way rather than simply trying to find an answer or idea and moving on. Second, look at things from different angles and consider a........

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