Breakthrough solutions rarely happen in a tidy and linear way. It’s simply impossible to know ahead of time which ideas will work best.

Yet this is where so many of us tend to get stuck. We have a hypothesis—usually based on best practices, personal preference, or past experience—and immediately decide that it’s the right approach to take.

The trap here is that the more attached you are to any one idea, the harder it will be to see alternative paths to your ultimate goal.

Your ability to solve complex business problems isn’t about knowing the right answer up front. If it were as simple as following a best practice or past strategy, then you would have already figured out how to solve it.

The key distinction between truly complex business problems, and the types of problems that are easily solved by an existing strategy, is the number of variables at play.

If you’re trying to figure out how to better manage your email inbox, there will be few variables that differ between your version of that problem and someone else’s. Following a list of best practices based on other people’s advice will probably do the trick.

But what if you’re trying to turn around declining revenue, or figure out how to improve team morale, or redesign your product so that it’s not made completely obsolete by AI?

Solutions that may have worked for other companies in the past may not be relevant to your unique situation in the present moment. There are simply too many variables that can affect the results. Someone else’s solution might offer a helpful starting point, but it’s unlikely to take you the entire way.

Solving complex business problems is about discovering the best answer—starting by exploring the problem, reframing how you look at it, placing purposeful bets, and iterating based on what you learn.

Think, test, learn, iterate—repeat.

The upside of all that uncertainty is that you can finally let go of the need to have all the answers, and instead focus on getting much better at asking the right questions, trusting the process, and learning as you go.

What will you do today to focus on iteration and discovery, rather than trying to know the right answer up front?

Will you start developing a problem-solving process that helps you test ideas and learn from the results?