#228 The Architecture of Problem-Solving: How Well-Defined Problems Lead to Better Solutions

Scott Townsend welcomes back familiar guest Ben Townsend for a deep dive into why "a well-defined problem is half the solution" and how this principle applies across business and personal scenarios.

• Understanding customer needs beyond their stated requirements is essential for effective problem-solving
• In software development, where engineers cost $130-$250/hour, misunderstanding problems leads to wasted time and resources
• The "tree swing" example demonstrates how communication breakdowns between customers and solution providers create ineffective outcomes
• Problem definition requires asking deeper questions about what customers are truly trying to accomplish
• The mountain peak analogy: solving initial problems reveals new challenges that weren't previously visible
• Abraham Lincoln's wisdom about spending four hours sharpening an axe before chopping illustrates the value of preparation
• Detective work in solving problems resembles murder mysteries - requiring close observation and questioning assumptions
• Real-world application example of planning a home water softening system by understanding the complete problem first

Email scott@scotttownsendinfo.com to share your experiences with defining problems before jumping to solutions.

Chapters

• 0:00 Episode Introduction & Breakfast Talk
• 9:44 A Well-Defined Problem is Half the Solution
• 16:44 Understanding Customer Needs in Business
• 22:15 Asking "Why" Before Jumping to Solutions
• 27:09 The Mountain Peak Analogy
• 32:42 Tree Swing Example & Communication Issues

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Scott Townsend Show brought to you by Pizza man Productions. Hey, this is Scott Townsend. Welcome back to the Scott Townsend Show. And today I've got with me back for the fourth time. Maybe fifth time is Ben Townsend. Ben, what's going on, man?

Speaker 2: 0:18

No, it's kind of been a busy week with my build and everything. I got another guy coming out this morning to um check out the place where he's going to put my workshop. So a lot of things going on, exciting stuff. We've been in this little apartment for a long time and it's going to be great to um finally move on, get into our own place.

Speaker 1: 0:36

So looking forward to it what did you have for breakfast this morning?

Speaker 2: 0:38

uh, I went with the two egg bandango this morning and which means I added I added an English muffin to my my two egg setup, so it's a two egg bandango, two egg.

Speaker 2: 0:56

Nolan and Reagan came this weekend I bought his breakfast stuff and you know it was great Cause I cooked him a big breakfast. But you know, I tried to limit my carb intake. So I I limit two eggs which I just love, I mean, and you know it's great because I cooked them with a big breakfast. But you know, I I try to um limit my carb intake so I I limit it to eggs which I just love.

Speaker 2: 1:09

I mean, I like eggs and more, just like them, but now that I have all this extra breakfast stuff now I kind of feel like I got to eat it. So then, then I can later, you know, go on a calorie restricted diet so I can get rid of the weight gain once again. I don't know what my thinking, but what will it be next?

Speaker 1: 1:29

the eggs, lollapalooza, or something you know? We'll see coachella, all right. Well, uh, the reason why we're back again today is because we were having a discussion not too long ago and ben mentioned something about. Uh mentioned this phrase. Uh, let's see it was. Uh, a good. A well-defined question is half the answer well-defined problem, oh half the solution oh, a well-defined problem is half the solution.

Speaker 1: 2:02

Yeah, okay, see, I even got that wrong. So I kind of wanted to find out a little bit more about that thinking and what that really means, and maybe you know, do you have any examples of what that might have looked like, any anecdotes where that might have come into play? But what is that? What does that mean? Why was that? Why is that so important that you felt like you had to, uh, mention it again?

Speaker 2: 2:31

because I found it to be a a truth, kind of like a fundamental truth. If you're trying to fix something or build something, or you know, in my business and basically I'll just call it software development where I'm a product manager and I'm leading a brand new idea for a data warehouse business intelligence solution for some business, we're basically, you know, I'm a consultant and I have a team of software engineers and analysts and stuff that are that are working to breathe life into the product that I define. You know, super important to understand the needs of your customer. And this is in the business world. But there's lots of application in your daily life, like building, for example, even if you're just doing it yourself or you're hiring it out, because in the software world they're famously high dollar assets Software engineers. They're going to run you between $130 to $250 an hour to do what they do. You're analysts. I had a team of my budget kind of moved between like 1.3 and just over $2 million a year to do it, you know, to run my product and to, you know, hire these resources to do the hands on keyboard work based on the requirements that I gathered. But you know, when you're considering that kind of money and a development timeline that if you do it fast, you know you're talking three month turnaround time. You know, and it's not uncommon for things like that.

Speaker 2: 4:08

You know, when I left my company, we were working on moving our data warehousing solution from an on-premises solution, which just means you know all the equipment in the building, to a cloud solution, which means that we're hiring somebody to store all the data and the computing power somewhere else. So Amazon Web Services or Azure, microsoft, whatever it happens to be, you're moving it from an on-premises. So that's a long-term kind of project. It's big, especially when you have a product like mine where we're moving a billion rows of data a month. So if you don't understand exactly what you're trying to accomplish and you've got a timeline with that kind of money that's 12 months to 18 months we'll just say and you get it wrong, you won't be in that business for very long. You've got to get it right. You've got to get it right. You won't be in that business for very long. You know, you got it. You got to get it right. You got to get it right.

Speaker 1: 5:07

What's the question again?

Speaker 2: 5:08

So why do you do that? Why no?

Speaker 1: 5:11

what's the what's the phrase A?

Speaker 2: 5:13

well-defined problem is half the solution. So when we go out, when I would go out, and I would interview customers, a lot of times customers would tell me they have some sort of real rudimentary system to get data, and hopefully information, out of all that data. And so when I go, sit down with them and try to understand their business, I definitely want to know what kind of information they have. Whether it's just off of Excel spreadsheets or access database or SQL server, whatever it is, doesn't really matter. I try to understand what they have. It's helpful to know who kind of designed that, who helped them with it, Because in business a lot of times it's the business, the management team, talking to somebody on their team who happens to be an Excel guru or an access guru, and it's great because they can develop something for them they never have before. It's very valuable to the business.

Speaker 2: 6:11

It's also very risky when you build your business based on systems like that, user-defined applications that can just kind of go away in the blink of an eye if somebody hits the delete key and didn't mean to do that and you built your business on that information and now it's just suddenly gone and now you know you have to start all over again. You know if you can even do it at all. So you know heavy duty applications, it supported architected solutions. You know you can't do that. There's a whole bunch of reasons why that's not really possible.

Speaker 2: 6:43

Just to accidentally delete I'm not going to say it's not impossible. It's highly unlikely that that can happen because it's architected to prevent those kind of things. So you know, when you're interviewing the customer you don't want to just know what they think the problem is, because they're limited. They're not subject matter experts in business intelligence delivery. They're experts in how you engage with the customer to understand what kind of doors and windows they need to go in their house, what the latest technology is in doors and windows or whatever your construction trade is, but they're not experts in IT and how to put it together from an IT standpoint. And so they're going to understand it in very, very simple terms.

Speaker 1: 7:28

You know.

Speaker 2: 7:29

I want to know how many windows we sold this month. I want to know how many doors we sold this month. What's the cumulative number for the year? I'd like to cut that also by quarter and do the total by quarter. So they're going to know those kind of things but they may not know. You know how to really build. You know metrics that are really valuable so that you can kind of compare rates. You know you all see metrics not in terms really of numbers. You do see them in terms of numbers. It's more helpful, I think, to see them in terms of rates because it helps you understand business at any scale you know, and numbers.

Speaker 2: 8:02

You know numbers are important. I'm not saying it's not, but you really need in your, in your key metrics, you really need rates anyway. So so my, my expertise is not in uh, you know, selling doors and windows. My expertise is in understanding what the where the customer is trying to take their business and what they see as the issues preventing them from taking their business to the next level, scaling up up their production, doing whatever, just being able to produce financials or understand, maybe, how to tweak their ordering system to more efficiently order the components they need to either build those things or sell them to customers.

Speaker 2: 8:40

So I could go in as a consultant and talk to somebody who sells doors and windows and lots of people do this, believe me, this is more common than not for people who call themselves consultants to come in and just understand what kind of metrics you're looking at today and just simply regurgitate those back to you from a very expensive system. So my job anybody's job in my mind as a consultant, whether you're doing it or not, is to go in and understand as much as you can about the problem the customer is trying to solve, not just the metric or the measure they're asking for You're asking for. What problems are you trying to solve? What problem are you trying to solve in your business? Because you may or may not have the metrics currently to give you insight into how you close on that problem and how to change your business and take it to the next level.

Speaker 1: 9:31

So you know if I'm a customer, I say I want to know how much money I spent last year on pencils, what you're saying is you want to know why. I want to know how much money I spend on pencils. That's exactly right. I would say okay, you want to know how much money I spend on pencils.

Speaker 2: 9:45

That's exactly right. I would say, okay, you want to know how much money you spend on pencils. That's pretty simple. But what do you do next when you understand how much money you spent on pencils? What are you therefore then going to do? What problem is that solved or what decision does that help you make? And you may say well, overall, we think we have a spending problem in this XYZ building supplier business and we're trying to get a handle on that.

Speaker 2: 10:20

Okay, so it's not really just about the pencils, because you probably have a million products in your business, so to speak Paper clips, pens paper, office, supplies, expenses All that stuff and people and shelving things, and then all your inventory that's sitting on the shelf that you're trying to sell, not just like consumables in a business, so all kinds of things. So you're really trying to get your hands around, your mind around. Where is your spend going and is the spend on each one of those things an appropriate spend? And so I could give you the number you're asking for on pencils, how much you spend on pencils, but then there's going to be very, very quickly when I deliver that to you, nine months from now, six months from now, you're going to go okay, great, we got the pencil. Now I need to know how much you, how much was being on paperclips. Oh, wait a minute, you didn't say anything about paperclips. You want paperclips too? Okay, we're going to go back in six months later, come back to paperclips and we find out.

Speaker 2: 11:15

you know that there's the real question 400 items ultimately that you want to track, cause what you're really trying to do is get your mind around your spin. Where's it going? That's a different question. It's a different problem we're trying to solve, and so, as a consultant, my job is to understand your business as good as you can explain it and hopefully almost as well as you understand your own business so and then find out where you're trying to take your business and be very crystal clear on the problem you're trying to solve or the decision you're trying to make. It's those two things, and I said it a million times as I would go in and talk to people and it's not that I think I'm smarter than they are but when I go in and talk to somebody about tires and I'm just totally picking this out of the air I know something about tires. I know a little bit about tires. When I go into a tire shop, I can tell them I need new tires and they can start asking me questions about what kind of driving I do and the latest technology in tires and the latest design by all the tire manufacturers. I don't know that stuff. That's not my business. The tire guy down at the tire store he is a subject matter expert and so I know I need tires. In this case he's the consultant and I'm the customer he's trying to please and he's got to deal with my rudimentary knowledge of tires and he's got to bring his subject matter expertise to bear to give me the best solution. So I walk away a happy customer. And so when I when I go in as a consultant, when I went in as a consultant, I was the tire expert. I'm not expert in your business, yet I wound up kind of being an expert in the business but fundamentally I'm an expert in how to deliver information systems to help you run your business better, less expensive, more efficiently and be able to answer questions.

Speaker 2: 12:58

We had a lot of this regulatory compliance with stuff that they never even thought of again. It was kind of like a growing part of their business that they really didn't want to have any part of, but they also didn't want the government to put them out of business because they were noncompliant. So a lot of it was around those kinds of things. What problem are you trying to solve? Well, we're getting in trouble with the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau and they're telling us that we need to provide a report that is this, this and this quarterly? Okay, gotcha, that's rock solid. That's they have hard requirements. You know now, if it's driven by somebody else, like a regulator, you know a lot of times we could get to the requirements. You go to some source document they have and say what kind of reporting they expect and get exactly what you want. If it's just business, a lot of times that gets a lot more mushy because the businesses a lot of times haven't gone to the problem or haven't gone to the extent of really defining all their processes and what their metrics are, and so a lot of time I would wind up helping them develop metrics to drive them and their business to where they're trying to go and then deliver that, um, it's.

Speaker 2: 14:08

It's very, very difficult to get away from the iterative nature of problem solving and you know technology changes. You know I'm looking at right now hooking up a soft water system to my new house when I was doing plumbing. You know, way back in the day, um, for a summer job in college. You know when we plumbed a house, you know, for all the water supply it was copper, that's it, it was copper and there's still a lot of copper being used today, but more and more well, mostly they're using what they call PEX. It's a plastic piping system in houses, and I really don't know much about PEX. I was doing some YouTube videos this morning on PEX, but way back in the day my problem is I need to plumb my house, so I have water in my house.

Speaker 2: 14:51

Okay, well, the, the, the leading technology and what everybody using the, the, the gold standard, was copper, and so you put in copper. But now when I, when I think about plumbing a house, I still think. I still think about copper and not PEX. But nobody's using copper anymore. It's too expensive, you know. It's more difficult to put in. You don't have the kind of quick connection. You got to do all the soldering and all that kind of stuff which I used to do, but now everybody's using PEX.

Speaker 2: 15:15

So you know, technology change are things that you can't as easily anticipate by its nature, because it's innovation, you know. So the things that you know we may. Whatever you're consulting on, you know you may have the best way to do it today as a subject matter expert, but in two or three years you're going to have something completely different, a new technology that makes all that old stuff kind of obsolete or too expensive. You know going forward and so everybody's trying to change. So you just can't get away from that. It's going to happen. That it's going to happen. The other thing is with customer requirements.

Speaker 2: 15:55

They're running their business and they're at a certain level of efficiency I'll just say that and they're trying to take their business to the next level. And the way I describe that to a customer is okay, you're trying to go. When you get your business to this new state and you solve this problem, you're describing the mountain peak you can see, based on the problems you have today with where you are, with your technology, all this kind of stuff. When I get you to that peak and when you go climb mountains, you climb this mountain right here, you get on top of this mountain and from that mountain, all of a sudden, you see new peaks that you couldn't see before, and so that starts defining. When I get you to this new level in your business, you're just going to. You're going to have more questions that we can't really anticipate right now, but you're they're going to be better informed questions because you're you.

Speaker 2: 16:38

You advanced your business, you know to, to a new place and now from that, from that vantage point, you start to see new mountain peaks, that form, oh okay, well, now I'm here, now I know I need to go there because I thought this was the biggest mountain peak, but now that I'm here, from my new vantage point, I'm able to ask better questions and I'm able to understand, once I've taken that first generation leap in technology and capabilities better word, you know now, now, from, from that vantage point, now I can see, you know kind of like what's next um, and so it's. It's iterative by nature, but some of that stuff is not necessarily iterative um, it's stuff that you can figure out now if you just do a good enough job of understanding the problem. And when you, when, again, when you're spending two million dollars and you spend 12 months to deliver something and ultimately it's not what the customer needs, you're not going to be in that business very long. So it's really important to get it right.

Speaker 1: 17:35

So if a husband and wife are planning to go on vacation, they have two kids doesn't matter where they're going. A well-defined problem is half the solution. How does this apply to a family preparing to go on vacation?

Speaker 2: 17:53

Well, what's the purpose of the vacation? Is it just to decompress, just to go somewhere to just have fun? Is it educational for the kids? Do we want to go to the Grand Canyon and explain to the kids how the canyon was formed introduction to geology for their new homeschooling effort or is it something where they want to go to disneyland and just go have fun? Just go ride the rides and just go have fun? I'm necessarily want to learn anything. Um, do I want to go to a place that's populated with lots of people? Is this a? Is this an unplugging kind of thing where I want to teach them how to camp and cook on a dutch oven and be part of nature?

Speaker 2: 18:31

You know, what are you, what are you trying to accomplish with your vacation? All those things, of course, are valid. But to be intentional and to really get the most out of what you're trying to do with your family, what you're trying to accomplish, you know, even even understanding at that level, what problem you're trying to solve is is pretty important. And you'll see, like in business, I saw this all the time we get in and somebody, somebody would call a meeting and we start talking about, you know, some sort of some sort of problem or have it, and people jump straight into solutioning without really understanding the problem. And I'm sitting there I'm, you know, a lot of times, you know I'm not running the medium, sitting there and I would ask, okay, because we'd have ideas thrown all over the place that are solving vastly different things. I'm like, ok, can I just ask a question real quick, like what problem are you trying to solve? And then you kind of see this, this mental, like well, you know, and then they start trying to think about that.

Speaker 2: 19:24

But you would. If you don't have that, you have completely unfocused discussion and you have a waste of people's time. And when you have 12 people sitting around the room, uh, average costs of a hundred a hundred bucks an hour, $120 an hour, um, that's an expensive meeting. So, and I don't I mean I don't like to waste time I think talking things out to some people defining the problem is a waste of time. They just want to jump straight into solution, um, and that's. And I think that's where people kind of like, naturally in a way, naturally kind of want to go, but as somebody who is trying to provide some guidance, to play the role of a consultant, so you get where you're trying to go in the most efficient way possible and exactly solve the problem for the business. That's the bullseye. It doesn't get better than that.

Speaker 1: 20:12

That's where you always want to be it reminds me of Abraham Lincoln saying if I had six hours to chop down a tree, I would spend the first four hours sharpening the axe. You think, oh my gosh, that's a waste of time. Well, okay, then go ahead. And you go ahead and spend six hours swinging the axe. You know there's gonna be wore out who's gonna get the job done quicker. You might not even be able to get it done in six hours if you don't stop to sharpen the blade.

Speaker 1: 20:42

You know so yeah it's uh, understand what you're doing and then prepare for it as best you can, and you might think you're wasting time up front. But man, you could really be heading in the wrong direction pretty quick and waste a lot of time, money and effort only to realize that you're nowhere near solving the problem can I show, can I share my screen real quick?

Speaker 2: 21:05

I was looking up. I was looking up something I used to use when I was doing my work. Oh, it says sharing is not turned on.

Speaker 1: 21:14

Hang on.

Speaker 2: 21:16

I see the leave button here. You better get that turned on quicker. Multiple can share simultaneously Huh. I said I see the leave button here too. You better let me share or I'm going to leave.

Speaker 1: 21:27

One participant can share at a time. Multiple participants can share simultaneously. Okay, can you share now? Yes, multiple participants can share simultaneously.

Speaker 2: 22:09

Ok, can you share now? Yes, OK, do you see my screen? Ok, so this, this is something you know. This is specific to agile development, but you know you can. You can define a problem and you can way over engineer something. So that's a problem, maybe as much as it is way under engineering, but this is something that people in agile development will recognize. So this first picture here is how the customer explained it. They explained I want to swing with three seats on it in a tree, how the project manager understood it. And you can see he's got the little rope on two different branches and the thing's not going to swing at all.

Speaker 1: 22:47

That how he?

Speaker 2: 22:48

that's how he explained it, how a developer developed it. So he's got a hole chopped in the tree because the project manager told him to put it on two different branches and there's a trunk in the middle, and so he said well, we can't have a trunk in the middle, I need to have two branches.

Speaker 1: 23:01

The swing needs to go. Yeah, the swing needs to be able to swing, swinging.

Speaker 2: 23:06

Swing and how the tester tested it. I'm not sure exactly what they're supposed to represent, but you can see it's seeing swing sitting on the ground, and the last one here is what the customer actually needed. So it's just an illustration to help people get on the same page with why, when you get beyond one person, communication becomes an issue, and politics comes into play when you get beyond one person.

Speaker 2: 23:27

Communication becomes an issue and politics comes into play when you get beyond one person. So you have a customer who needs something, but you he's got to hand that off to somebody else to build it for him and so being able to kind of perfect that communication to really understand really and truly what problem the customer's trying to solve. He wants a tire swing that fit. So he didn't need this big, expensive solution at all.

Speaker 2: 23:48

You know, he just needed a rope and a tire yeah, you know, a lot of times it goes the other way, where they're kind of explaining I want a rope and a tire, um, but then you know you come to find out later on that he wants a whole, you know, set of playground equipment where a jungle gym and monkey bars and all kinds of stuff anyway. Anyway just an illustration to kind of show how people in agile development world kind of help people understand the reason for the need to take clear requirements.

Speaker 1: 24:19

And understand the problem. Define the problem as best you can, spend some time understanding the problem, stay away from knee-jerk reactions, and even then you're going to make some mistakes, but at least you're a way ahead of where you would have been. Like the doctor steven covey talks about this uh couple that had a baby and they called her doctor because the baby wasn't feeling well on the weekend and the doctor was at a football game. And they said hey, our baby's not feeling well, running a fever. Whatever Doctor said, hey, don't, no, no, no. This doctor said I'm sitting in for your doctor and I'm on call. I'm the one on call and so, okay, so your baby's got a fever. Okay, give him two Tylenol We'll, I'm on call, I'm the one on call, and so, okay, so your baby's got a fever. Okay, give them a two tile and I'll see you.

Speaker 1: 25:10

You know, monday, monday morning, and uh, they hung up and the wife looked at the husband and said does he realize our daughter is two months old? Don't you think that's way overdosing? He didn't understand the problem. So they call him back and said hey, just wanted to make sure you knew our daughter is two months old. He's like oh yeah, no, no, no, no, no, just give him this instead, you know, and uh, yeah, glad you called back and cleared that up, because it could have been a big problem yep, jumping straight into a solution without understanding the problem right not asking enough questions, some some, some basic good questions.

Speaker 1: 25:55

So yeah, it can, uh, but a well-defined problem is half the solution, and if you don't take time to understand the the problem, well enough, you're uh go at your own peril, I guess and yeah, you'll deliver a solution, but will it actually solve the problem?

Speaker 2: 26:12

who knows?

Speaker 1: 26:13

I mean honestly you'll wind up with a swing.

Speaker 2: 26:19

Yeah, yeah, yeah who knows it may or may not. It's just kind of like shot in the dark, but but really you know it's. You know, from from a consultant standpoint, you have to have a lot of patience with the customer and the customer has to have lots of patience with you because they don't understand. You know, they're like you know, you guys, you're all the same. You know, you come in here you think you're smarter than everybody else and blah, blah. It's really not that at all.

Speaker 2: 26:45

You, you know, um, you know I have academic background in technology, but my, my real skillset is the ability to bridge the gap between business people and it organizations, because it people, they want to do it speak, and that they, they love to speak way over the head of their customers, and it's a complete nightmare, and you know.

Speaker 2: 27:07

So, you, you know, I would try to like kind of limit, um, the amount of when I had to have my it people, you know, in a room and there were some that were better than others, um, but you don't want to get into it speak, you know, and confuse the customer because it just ticks them off. It would take me off too, because you're you're, you know, sometimes it just seems like you're just trying to talk over my head and show how smart you are. You don't know anything about my business, though, and you're not even taking time here to understand my business. So it really helps to create good relationships with your customer and don't just come at them with a bunch of your own questions, but explain to them a little bit the process, bit the process, and I think showing the picture of the tree swing was one way to kind of introduce, you know, the kind of solidify, the need for the process, you know, to really have a clear, very clear understanding.

Speaker 2: 27:57

I use the analogy of the mountain peaks a million times, you know and so through this process of building relationships and then when you deliver something that just really knocks their socks off. Now you've gone beyond consultant, now you kind of have a, a, an insider kind of view. Now you, you're, you're a trusted supplier, you know, you're a trusted person in their circle, and that's different than being a consultant.

Speaker 2: 28:23

Now you have trust and they come to you now with formative questions that they have versus something they already think they have the answer to. Let's get Ben, or whoever, in the room here here's our new problem so we can have him start thinking about how to solve this problem with technology. And so then that's when you know you've made it. When they ask you into the room at that kind of formative stage to help them from the get-go, they're thinking about you, they understand the value that you bring, you know and they invite you in early in that process because they trust you.

Speaker 1: 28:59

It reminds me also. This process reminds me a lot of murder mysteries. Some of the best murder mysteries any any halfway decent murder mystery is all about trying to understand the problem. Sherlock holmes comes in, has no idea what's going on. They tell him you know, here's what happened, based on their experience, and now he's got to try to understand the problem. Uh, and he's pretty good at it, uh, he's able to also see some things that people overlook just because this is, uh, he's a subject matter expert. Colombo, aga, you know, hercule perot, agatha christie, uh, any of these guys.

Speaker 1: 29:37

You walk into a problem. You walk into a room and here's a problem, as, and some people, oh, it was a suicide. Look, there's a suicide note right there. See, doesn't that explain it? But, and we just watched, uh, the residents on netflix and there's this guy laid out on the floor and it looks like a suicide, and so everybody's like, hey, the suicide. So let's wrap this thing up, let's go, you know, let's get out of here, and they're like whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, not so fast. What do you mean, not so fast? Well, I got to do my due diligence, I got to ask the right questions.

Speaker 2: 30:08

Did he really shoot himself in the back of the head Twice?

Speaker 1: 30:15

So anyway, that kind of a thing that's also a good kind of a not a word picture, but an analogy, I guess is where any murder mystery, cop, show, detective, you know the whole thrill of the show is to watch the person try to come to a better understanding of the problem. And there's going to be all kinds of people that try to get them off track. Understanding of the problem, and there's going to be all kinds of people that try to get them off track, especially the bad guy. There's going to be some people to get them off track because they don't realize what they're doing.

Speaker 1: 30:49

They just you know, they have no idea and so it's this uh colombo type of guy that's got to go get through the weeds here and figure out what's right and what's wrong, and and, uh, and it always uh, and they always do it in like 45 minutes. That's really awesome.

Speaker 2: 31:07

So, anyway, um yeah, you just can't jump straight to a conclusion.

Speaker 2: 31:13

You can't jump straight into solutioning. You know, um, and you know, at a like, I told you about my my plumbing thing, where I'm trying to get a soft water system hooked up, and I'm going to do it. I mean, I've done plumbing but I'm not an expert in pex and my house is plumbed in pex, and so my, my two problems were one I need a water softening solution. So I was researching the different kinds of water softening systems I could get, based on a water test that we did. That said, here's all the thing, cause we have a well, and so I had it tested to. I want to know what were the contaminants in my water. And, uh, turns out, my water is pretty darn good. Uh, but we, you know it's it's well water and so it it. It may have things like a sand and stuff in it, so I need a. I don't I may not need, like a, a super duper whole house filtering system, but I do need a sediment filter before the water moves on to the water softener.

Speaker 1: 32:06

Or else you're going to be trying to unclog your shower head nozzles.

Speaker 2: 32:11

Yeah, and my soft water system itself and all that. So so I need, I wanted to get a, a sediment filter, you know where. I could just replace that filter every six months or 12 months or whatever it happens to be, you know, before the water then goes on to my soft water system because I don't want it, I don't want to clog it up, I want it to do its job of softening water. And then I'm thinking, okay, but I do want to have one tap where we can, like, take everything out of the water that we don't want because we may have contaminants show up at some point that we don't have right now. So I would love to take all of our drinking water, have it go through an RO unit. So that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to have a soft water system, I'm going to have a sediment filter and I'm going to have an RO unit at the dispenser in the kitchen, at the sink, where I can get water. That I know for sure.

Speaker 2: 32:57

If somebody comes over with a baby and they want to mix some formula, I'm going to say go to the ro unit and get your water there, you know. Um, it's less critical for, you know, people, healthy people, you know, if there's, you know some, some small something in there where water really looks pretty good. So, anyway, that's the problem I was trying to solve. Then the next thing was I have pecs, you know, coming out of the wall that I got to hook into. Well, I don't know anything about pecs. I don't know how it works. I mean, uh, at a super high level. I know how it works. Water comes in there, it goes out there I don't know how to do all the connections.

Speaker 2: 33:29

I don't know the tools, and so I was. I was researching stuff today and then I was diagramming. I was diagramming, you know how that peck system is gonna uh look. So I had something like this. I didn't plan on showing this, but you can kind of see how I have it kind of diagrammed out, because I went, when I go pick this stuff up, I got to drive from here to curb hills 20 minutes away.

Speaker 2: 33:49

When I go pick up my stuff, you know, I also got to pick up all these fittings. Well, how many do I need, you know? Do I need, do I need, three elbows? Do I need five elbows? Do I want to use a little sharp bite connectors? How many t's do I need? How about a ball valve and this thing? So I'm planning out my system so when I go, I can pick up exactly the things I need, plus the tools to work with pecs, so I can do it, because I don't want to bring it all the way back here and then and then get all my stuff here and go oh well, I need fittings to hook all stuff up now. I Now I've got to go back to Kerrville. So if you don't plan it well, if you don't understand the problem you're trying to solve and just a super simple example you wind up wasting time and money, spend some extra time up front.

Speaker 2: 34:32

And money it costs you. My diesel truck is not the most fuel-efficient marvel on the planet. It's not a Tesla on the planet. It's not a tesla yeah. So you know, going back it's not a big deal, but you know it takes time and money and maybe maybe you have time to do it today and maybe I don't. Oh, dang it. I need to go back to kerbill and they're closed here in in 20 minutes so I can't even get there. So I got now instead of finishing today.

Speaker 2: 34:55

I got to go back tomorrow and hopefully finish tomorrow you know so just a super simple example I just thought of in what I'm actually doing right now in my non-work life just Ben Townsend Inc. Just doing my stuff.

Speaker 1: 35:10

I know you have a hard stop so we'll let you go here. Thanks for spending the time and glad you enjoyed your two-egg Fandango. That was good. Glad you enjoyed your two-egg fandango it was good.

Speaker 1: 35:22

And thanks for explaining the well-defined problem as half the solution, and so anybody out there listening, did this make any sense to you? Have you had experience with this where it went bad or it went well? Let us know. Send an email, scott, at scotttownendinfo, and uh, yeah, I'd like to hear your stories. So, all right, ben, have a good rest of the day and uh, we'll be talking to you okay, sounds good, scott, see ya so for ben townsend, this is scott townsend.

Speaker 1: 35:55

Thanks for listening to the scott townsend show. Have a great day, everything's be all right and we'll talk to you later. The Scott Townsend Show is a Dietz-O-Man production. For more episodes, visit the Scott Townsend Show YouTube channel, listen on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.