Solving a complex business problem isn’t a one and done deal. It’s an ongoing process of identifying the weakest link, fixing it, and then identifying the next weakest link to focus on.

And that next link may or may not be directly related to the first.

Zoom back out and look at all the big links in your chain. By going back to that high-level view, you may discover that the next weakest link is related to a different functional outcome.

Remember, you’re not looking for just any problem to solve. You’re looking for the problems that will have the greatest impact on your success.

If your first weakest link was a marketing problem, the next could be another marketing problem as well. But it could just as easily be related to sales, customer retention, employee recruiting, or any number of other parts of your business.

The key takeaways to consider are:

• Once you’ve fixed the weakest link in the chain, there will always be a new weakest link to discover and focus on.
• That next weakest link may or may not be directly related to the same functional outcome (marketing, sales, HR, etc.).
• Discovering the weakest links in your business is an ongoing practice of zooming in and out—being able to see both the big picture and the granular details.

What will you do today to help you focus on the right problems at the right time?

Will you practice looking at your business from multiple perspectives—before deciding on which problems to focus on solving?