The Solutionist

How to Become What

the World Needs Most

by

Robert Hoekman, Jr

Tel: 602.652.2733
Email: robert@rhjr.net
Web: www.rhjr.net
Summary
For the past decade, my living has depended on being the guy who can solve problems. In The
Solutionist, I show you what every project, every problem, and every organization has needed to
resolve its most menacing issues, and how to make a career of being the one to provide it.

In his bestselling book, A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink posited that right-brainers are the new
and future owners of the business world. As artists, storytellers, designers, and big-picture
thinkers, these high-concept, high-touch key holders solve problems that confound other experts,
and do so in a way that leads to more cohesive customer experiences and more beautiful
mousetraps. Pink also rightly showed that critical thinking and creative problem-solving are
abilities that are in ever-increasing demand and canʼt be outsourced. What Pink didnʼt do was tell
us how to put this sixth sense of solutionism to work. How it looks in practice. How to turn it into a
set of aptitudes that can be mastered, listed on a resume, measured, and repeated.

While there are countless resources available on problem-solving and design thinking, right-brain
solutionism isnʼt a rote process. A career of solving problems and delivering solutions is a career
of abstraction over concreteness, of way-finding over map-reading. One canʼt become a deft
practitioner through gimmicky right-brain exercises alone. And problem-solving isnʼt as simple as
working through a series of flow charts and decision trees. Solving problems, in fact, is but a
small part of the solutionistʼs work. Much more than this, the solutionistʼs job is to see through to
the core of a problem—whether the usability of a product, a failing sales process, or something
else—envision a solution, devise a plan to carry it out, help implement it, track its success, and
improve it. Along the way, the solutionist must communicate clearly and succinctly to people
throughout the org chart, from the CEO to the marketer, to build a following, earn trust, and lead
the team out of the proverbial darkness. No book on problem-solving shows you how to do that.
And solutionism has to become a hirable skill before it can be valued and relied upon as a core
piece of an organizationʼs brain trust. The business world isnʼt exactly known for its touchy-feely
side. Business leaders like things they can measure.

So how, exactly, does one become a solutionist?

Despite that its core competencies are rooted in the right side of the brain, solutionism is a
cultivatable skill. And like any skill, it can be fostered in very tangible and measurable ways.

As a veteran practitioner of experience design and strategy for the web, I've collaborated with all
kinds of clients on their biggest and most perplexing issues—from business strategy to project
management, from usability to persuasion—and Iʼve become adept at a lengthy list of essential
business skills and concepts. The need for a solutionist is the one thing all of these jobs have had
in common. What every one of these projects required was someone who could take a fresh look
at any problem and clear a path to its best solutions. Someone to do things differently. To get
them unstuck. To see the possibilities theyʼd been missing by becoming too entrenched, often in
issues of their own design. For ten years, this has been my work.

Iʼm Robert Hoekman, Jr, and Iʼm a solutionist. Nice to meet you.

In The Solutionist: How to Become What the World Needs Most, I dissect the mysterious
methods of the right-brained problem-solver and show you how the best solution-makers go
about their work, from how they see the world to how they influence the people in charge. Rather
than pose a simple process or present evidence of a trend, I give you something more practical:
the very principles of problem-solving.
Author
Robert Hoekman, Jr, is a passionate and outspoken user experience specialist who has worked
with MySpace.com, Seth Godin, Adobe, Burton Snowboards, Edmunds.com, Automattic (the
makers of Wordpress), Mutual of Omaha, Thomson, and countless others to deliver superior user
experiences to a wide range of audiences. He has has written four books and dozens of articles
on user experience and has spoken at industry events all over the world, including An Event
Apart, Web App Summit, SXSW, Future of Web Design, and many others.

Robert wrote the Amazon bestseller Designing the Obvious (New Riders, 2006), which continues
to sell well more than three and a half years after its release, and its follow-up, Designing the
Moment (New Riders, 2008), also still selling well. His articles have been featured on the
Peachpit, Think Vitamin, Adobe, Moleskiners, InformIT, and Macromedia websites, and he has
been a guest blogger for Peachpit and InformIT.

His newest book, Web Anatomy (New Riders, 2009), was coauthored by the renowned design
researcher Jared Spool, founder of User Interface Engineering. Robert and Jared also co-host
the popular Userability podcast, in which the pair answer questions about user experience from
call-in guests.

Learn more about Robert through his consulting site at www.miskeeto.com and his personal site
at www.rhjr.net.

Audience
The Solutionist, first and foremost, is for anyone involved in engineering value for a business,
including entrepreneurs, founders, marketers, principals, and designers at every level—basically,
anyone who might be present at a concept meeting. The book is in part, after all, a case for
legitimizing the role of solutionist and actively hiring them. People who want to solve problems for
a living will find just as much value in The Solutionist as those who need to hire these problem-
solvers.

That said, The Solutionist will also be useful for people in small businesses—including home-
based businesses—which develop and sell products or services. This might include shop owners,
consultants, accountants, marketers at a construction company or hotel, or a million other people.
Every business has problems to overcome. Every project needs a problem-solver.

Time after time, when clients hire me for user experience expertise and usability audits, what they
need most desperately is an understanding of their real problems and a vision for their outcome.
They need, in other words, someone to listen, diagnose the issues, interpret, and explain their
own problems back to them. And, or course, they need someone to help solve these problems.

Some of these clients—the smart ones—know they have a problem. They know theyʼre
floundering for direction and muddling through decisions and struggling to find the right solutions.
What they want is someone to finally look at the big picture, find out what image emerges from
the puzzle pieces, and create a plan that will move the company forward. Itʼs the business
equivalent of writerʼs block. These companies want to get unstuck. While the results I deliver
center around web user experience and usability, my work is about helping my clients solve their
most difficult issues, and showing them how to better solve problems on their own later on.

The people in these roles will buy, recommend, and keep a copy of this book because theyʼll
need it as a reference as they re-imagine their problems and begin to invent vision-driven
solutions for every aspect of their business.
Competition
The primary competition for The Solutionist is Daniel Pinkʼs A Whole New Mind (Riverhead,
2005), in which Pink first makes the case for the future role of right-brainers. Because the book
includes right-brain exercise recommendations, some may find it unnecessary to read The
Solutionist. However, the opposite is true. Anyone interested in further pursuing a right-brain-
centric role or career would benefit greatly from also reading The Solutionist. This is true, in fact,
even for those who have not read A Whole New Mind.

While Pink presents a cohesive argument for enhancing oneʼs right-brain skills and gives advice
for improving those skills along the way, what he offers are general purpose exercises rather than
tangible steps one can take in the context of a real project. This is where The Solutionist steps in.
Here, I offer practical advice on how to perform the job of right-brain problem-solver—how to truly
understand problems, invent commonsense solutions, present them, persuade others of their
value, measure their success, and then improve them.

The Solutionist, in other words, is not a competitor for A Whole New Mind. Itʼs a complement.

That said, because I recap Pinkʼs argument in the first chapter, itʼs not at all necessary to read
one before reading the other. One could certainly read The Solutionist without having previously
read Pinkʼs work.

Manuscript specifications
The Solutionist is a standard text-driven book which will feature few images, if any, and can easily
conform to the dimensions and design of the typical nonfiction book, ala Blink (Gladwell), The
Paradox of Choice (Schwartz), or Stiff (Roach). The expected length is 280 pages (70,000
words), and there are no special requirements to be considered for its presentation.

That said, hardcover editions tend to be more persuasive, particularly to business leaders looking
for expertise. As such, a hardcover release is strongly preferred. Also, with regard to the cover
design, itʼs important to consider that the content of the book is about how to devise,
communicate, and deliver clear and simple solutions. Ideally, the bookʼs cover design will reflect
this message through a clean, spare design.

This manuscript will be completed in 6-8 months from the date of contract.

Outline
Table of Contents

1. On Solutionism
a. On Daniel Pinkʼs Case for Right-Brainers
b. Every Projectʼs Problem
c. Every Companyʼs Need
d. The Process of Problem-Solving
e. The Promise of This Book
2. See the Obvious
a. Ask Obvious Questions
b. Read, Write, and Draw Pictures
3. Question Everything
a. Ask Why, Then Ask Again
b. Treat the Disease, Not the Symptoms
 i. Read Between the Lines
c. Measure Everything
4. Make the Complex Clear
a. Start With Why
b. Tell Stories
c. Spread the Analogies
d. Outline Patterns
e. Use Mental Models
f. Iterate Solutions
5. Connect the Disconnected
a. See the Invisible
b. Make New Analogies
6. Think Strategically, Not Tactically
a. Scrap the Tactics
b. Have a Vision
c. Devise a Plan
7. Solve Small, Solve Big
a. Find the Obvious Solution First
b. Make Tiny Changes
c. Make Sweeping Changes
8. Avoid Process
a. Ignore the Rules
b. Adopt Tricks and Techniques
9. Take Charge
a. Initiate
b. Brainstorm
c. Collaborate
d. Delegate
e. Persuade
f. Solve!
10. Solutionism in Practice
a. The Doers
i. Consulting
ii. In-house
b. The Makers
i. Inventors
ii. Entrepreneurs
c. Hiring Solutionists
i. Now Seeking: Qualities, Accomplishments, and Behaviors

Annotated Table of Contents

1. On Solutionism
We open with an anecdote from a recent project. While every project brings its own set of
problems, the way we go about inventing their solutions remains fundamentally the same. This
project is no different. This story sets the stage for the book and transitions into the wider point of
what all projects, regardless of industry or context, have in common: the need for critical thinking
and creative problem-solving. To clarify this case, I summarize Daniel Pinkʼs argument for the role
of right-brainers in business and posit that these abstract abilities are indeed learnable and
repeatable and can therefore be employed by people within any organization.

Next, I summarize the problem-solving process, which can be described in four parts: Learn,
Plan, Act, and React. Basically, we go from not knowing to knowing, from not understanding to
understanding. We think, we invent, we arrive at a solution. Then we plan, implement, measure,
and iterate. This process is old hat, and there are countless books and articles on problem-
solving strategies and tools. The Solutionist, I assert here, is not about solving problems. Itʼs
about solving them well. Itʼs not about decision trees. Itʼs about understanding problems, creating
whole solutions, communicating them, enacting them, and enhancing them. Thereʼs a lot more to
being a solutionist than solving problems.

I end by promising to the reader that I will deliver not only the set of principles behind most
impressive acts of solutionism, but that in doing so, I will teach them to do the thing that has thus
far made me an in-demand consultant: I will give them my superpower. I will teach them to
become what the world needs most.

2. See the Obvious

The problems Iʼm asked to solve frequently carry with them a slew of obvious questions no one is
asking. Why not? Because either the people involved are afraid to do so (whether for fear of
upsetting others involved or a lack of confidence in their communication skills) or theyʼve become
too entrenched in the issues to see whatʼs right in front of them. Either way, they spend most of
their time looking for escape routes that let them do something adequate but prevent them from
doing anything great. Ironically, most of us want to do great work. We just need an excuse. We
need permission. Asking the obvious questions forces evaders to face what theyʼve been
unwilling to bring up themselves. It gives them the freedom they need to address the real
problems. And it compels them to finally strive for greatness.

But beyond questioning that which is already obvious, we can externalize the elements of a
problem so they become obvious.

If the easiest way to learn is to teach, the easiest way to understand is to create. Through writing
and drawing simple pictures (a low-effort technique we can glean from Dan Roamʼs books alone),
we can put problems and their considerations, quite literally, in front of us where they can be
examined. It sounds like a weapon of oversimplification, for sure, but the effect is profound.
Rather than leave all the details in our heads where we must repeatedly recall and reorganize
them, we can create artifacts and lay them out in front of us, and in doing so, give ourselves the
ability to spot patterns and details we might otherwise be unable to see.

3. Question Everything
In this chapter, I offer a crash course in the art of asking why.

Asking why over and over again may be the annoying habit of five-year-olds, but itʼs also an
essential habit of solutionists. To get to the truth—the real problems—one must continue to ask
why until there is no more why to uncover. This is key not only to understanding problems, but to
understanding how they started, what the real goals for their outcomes should be, and how to
solve them.

Customer and stakeholder interviews is useful here, but only if you insistently push through the
surface of an issue, maintain a healthy skepticism of every human response, and learn to see
past the answers youʼre given and extrapolate the underlying truths.

But even after questioning problems to arrive at our solutions, we must question our results to
arrive at improved solutions. Arguably the most pivotal thing we can do to legitimize our skills and
to prove our worth as solutionists is learn to measure our success. In addition, we can use
measured results to inform our future decisions—literally using answers to improve other
answers. But measurement is another trick entirely. To do it well, we have to invent measurement
methods, learn to analyze the results we get, ask why the results are what they are, ask how to
improve them, and then modify our strategies based on those answers.
4. Make the Complex Clear
One only follows a pied piper whose pipe radiates beautiful music. Effective communication is
one of the most critical skills a solutionist can have. We must be able to communicate our
findings, our vision, our strategy, else no one will follow us. Fortunately, there are many ways to
accomplish this, and many of them not only serve our audience but are also useful right-brain
exercises themselves, including narratives, metaphors, patterns, and mental models.

But making the complex clear is also about making solutions themselves clear. And this means
continually improving them until you, to update and perhaps correct Einsteinʼs famous assertion,
“make everything as clear as possible but not clearer." (A lesson learned from a decade in
design: simplicity is not the ideal goal, clarity is.)

In this chapter, we take a look at a variety of communication tools and how they help deliver
clearer messages, and also a strategy for iteration that results in clearer solutions.

5. Connect the Disconnected

The fictitious television doctor Gregory House solves problems in what appears to be an arbitrary
way—by having epiphanies during conversations about seemingly unrelated topics. But this isnʼt
arbitrary at all. Itʼs common for solutionists. Why? Because they keep problems in mind all the
time and look for insights in everything, no matter how disparate. They believe everything is
connected—that analogies are everywhere and hence that insights and possible solutions lurk
behind every corner. (Note that House also frequently uses analogies to describe theories to his
colleagues.)

Bestselling author and marketing guru Seth Godin is a master of this. His career is practically built
on his ability to recognize patterns and draw analogies. For proof, and for practice, one need only
look through his archive of blog posts with the intent to spot the trends. Like most brilliant
communicators, his points are drenched in references to unrelated, analogous topics that unify
the known and the unknown and help us assimilate ourselves to his particular brand of genius.

In this chapter, I cite the work of great communicators to reveal what they have in common and
then break the patterns down into a set of practicable techniques.

6. Think Strategically, Not Tactically

The now-classic anecdote for the case of strategy over tactics is the presidential race between
Obama and McCain. While Obamaʼs campaign was rooted in a well-communicated strategy that
spread throughout his campaign staff and army of volunteers, McCainʼs campaign, true to the
senatorʼs military background, ran on day-to-day tactics. What we can all easily see in the vast
difference between how the two campaigns dealt with plans, surprises, and emergencies is that
tactics are bad strategy.

Despite that there are endless debates in practitioner circles about the merits of this tactic or that
one, the tactics you use donʼt matter one bit. What matters is the result. And the best path to the
resolution of any problem is to devise an driving strategy rather than collect a set of tactics.
Figure out the Why and What first, figure out the How later. Start by defining a vision for the end
result, devise a plan for achieving it, then get out of the way.

7. Solve Small, Solve Big

In this age of innovation, it can be easy to think that everything must be overhauled, revamped,
turned inside-out, and flipped on its head. It doesnʼt. Many problems can be solved through tiny
changes, and in this chapter, I offer several examples of small tweaks with a big impact.
Of course, this isnʼt true for every problem—some do indeed require sweeping changes. Here, we
also look at cases when dramatic change was the only option, and examine how to know the
difference between the two situations.

8. Avoid Process
The interaction design community is obsessed with process. Many think that process is the key to
virtually any design project and the most essential ingredient for success. Jared Spool, revered
design researcher, disagrees. Having studied what makes great teams great, Jared spotted a
pattern: the best teams have no process. The most effective teams ignore the hard-defended
rules of their industries and professions and instead rely on what Jared calls “tricks and
techniques”—a collection of tools pulled out only when and if theyʼre needed.

The key to success isnʼt process, Jared says. Itʼs four things: knowledge, skill, talent, and
experience. In this chapter, we look at examples of this approach to see if Jared is right and, if so,
what makes the system-less better than the systematic.

9. Take Charge
Many problems are only problems because no one will solve them. And in this chapter, I talk
about how to create momentum.

Yes, youʼve heard about these concepts before. Brainstorming, collaborating, and delegating are
by no means new ideas. But there are tricks to making these techniques effective, and odds are,
you havenʼt tried any of them.

The best brainstorming sessions, for example, include people to fill two roles: the design dictator
and the devilʼs advocate. The design dictatorʼs job is to make the final decision on whether or not
an idea is good or bad, feasible or impossible, and the simple act of assigning this job to
someone makes that person better. The devilʼs advocate, on the other hand, is there to “question
everything”—to be the resident skeptic and make sure the group considers the caveats and
pitfalls of every idea.

Rather than rehash the advice of every leadership expert out there, this chapter offers the hidden
tips and tricks every team can use to produce better solutions, regardless of the problem at hand,
how to distribute the workload, and how to use persuasion techniques to check off that horrible
task of “building consensus.”

10. Solutionism in Practice

Pivotal to legitimizing solutionism as a career choice and a sought-after job skill is understanding
how practitioners fit into projects and teams, whether in-house or as consultants. In this chapter, I
discuss the various ways a solutionist can go about the work of inventing and carrying out
solutions, as well as what to look for if youʼre a hiring manager in need of a few good solutionists.
I also offer examples of solutionists in the roles of inventor and entrepreneur, where their
solutions morph into products, services, and even companies.

Whether youʼre a solutionist for a day, a week, or a career, one thing is for sure: solutionist skills
can be applied anywhere. Assuming you take the time to earn an appropriate level of expertise on
a given subject, you can now solve virtually any problem.

Heck, you could even use these techniques to sort out how to land your next job. Perhaps even
one solving problems for a living.