When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”
Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
So what is the difference between a “problem” and a “challenge”? I am assuming there is a difference – however subtle – because typically two words don’t mean precisely the same thing. I sometimes find that gaining clarity on words – or even playing with shades of meaning – allows us to see things in new ways.
The dictionary is of some help with a possible distinction between a “problem” and a “challenge”. One definition of a problem is “a question proposed for solution or discussion”. One definition of a challenge is “difficulty in a job or undertaking that is stimulating to one engaged in it”. That may be a good start, but I would like to take these two words and ask them to work a little harder than their dictionary definitions might suggest. I may be stretching semantic form, but it is in service of something that I think is real – and which I think you, dear reader, will recognize as such. Without the distinction, the experience might not otherwise have a solid lexicon and could, therefore, remain largely invisible.
Family leaders almost always come to me with a “problem”. Some of these problems are big, complex issues of intergenerational succession or issues of broken relationships. They may be problems of entitlement or preparing the rising generation to wisely steward wealth. They may be questions around successful business transitions that could impact entire communities. They may be questions of family dynamics associated with giving money away to make the world a better place. These problems are obviously consequential or we wouldn’t be having the conversation.
What these families want is a solution to their problem – they want to fix it. Often quickly. They believe, rightly or wrongly, that I have some expertise to help them resolve the issue. At least they hope that might be the case. Yet the kinds of problems I work with are typically not amenable to “expert” fixes as they imagine they would want – that is the fixes aren’t accessible from within the boundaries of the existing world of the client system.
The Presenting Problem
In psychology, there is an axiomatic principle that when a client walks through the door, the problem they present is not likely the real problem – there is something underneath or behind it. This initial problem is referred to as the “presenting problem”. To work with a client, a therapist must treat the presenting problem with utmost seriousness, gain trust and build the relationship, but eventually the real problem reveals itself and then the true work begins. Sometimes it turns out that the presenting problem is symptomatic of the real problem, sometimes the presenting problem is a test of trust, and sometimes it is simple confusion.
I don’t do therapy with families – I work with their culture, not their psyches – but the presenting problem is very real in this work as well (as it is for many professions). In this process of uncovering what is “really” going on, I have come to see a vast difference between a problem and a challenge. Here is where I am asking the words to carry freight beyond their dictionary definitions. While this may not be a distinction that the bare words can support, I ask you to bear with me a bit as I explain a context for this distinction.
The Distinction Illustrated
One family leader came to me recently with a very specific problem – it had to do with business succession issues, ownership, and competing agendas and interests within the family. The family felt stuck and it wanted to get unstuck. I listened for about a half hour and asked some question to draw him out to get a clearer picture of the problem. It seemed, at this point, that he had gotten out what he wanted to say – and that he had exhausted how he was thinking about the situation. I then asked him, “As a leader in your family, what is your challenge?” He struggled a bit – he knew I had heard him, but the question threw him, so he essentially re-described the situation using slightly different words. I gently said to him, “No, that is your problem. What is the challenge?” He fumbled about for a minute or two and then he asked “What do you see as the challenge?” I told him that I wouldn’t give him an answer right then because I didn’t yet know enough, I wanted to hear more and, besides, I didn’t want to let him off the hook quite so easily. ( I wasn’t being coy here – I truly didn’t yet know enough and I wanted to let him live with the question a bit).
We continued to explore the contours of the problem and dive more deeply into what was going on. I asked hard questions that he had not asked himself, and he proposed possible solutions that I questioned and poked at. He became very, very clear on the dimensions of the problem. He understood its contours and textures far better than when we started. This clarity arose by giving him a place to explore more deeply and by asking some decent questions that began to shift his original “story” of what was happening in his family.
I then said, “Let’s circle back. What is the challenge you are as facing as a family leader?” He reiterated the problem (but with more nuance). This time I said, “That isn’t it.” He tried again. No luck. He then asked me to share with him what I saw that he wasn’t. What I said went something like this: “This problem your family is facing is a difficult problem – based on our deeper exploration, it is pretty clear that it is not something that you can solve given your current state as a family. As we have explored this, it seems that you see that you are truly stuck. I believe that together, we can solve this problem and there are ways to do that. I believe I could help you (by this time I had confidence that this was true.) The problem is that if we simply solve this problem, next year you will face a different problem, and the year after than an even bigger problem and the year after that a more complex problem. Your challenge is not to solve the problem in front of you but to build the capacity of your family to solve any problem that might arise.” I could see the penny drop.
The Distinction Explained
This is what I see as the difference between a problem and a challenge. A problem can be solved (or not) with the resources you currently have available to you. I have a friend who says that if money can solve a problem and you have the money, it’s not a problem. What he is driving at here is that the solution to many problems is largely a matter of will or focus or discipline or some limiting belief – and the only thing making it a problem is “us”. These problems are relatively simple to solve (at least in theory).
Complex problems, on the other hand, can give rise to what I am calling challenges. With challenges – as I am using that word– we must transcend ourselves. We face a challenge when we are required to adapt – a challenge requires new skills and different capabilities. It requires not just the application of skills we have, but a quantum leap in development. In short, a challenge requires that we build capacity.
I find that these types of challenges in families are almost always cultural – they are embedded in the “software” underlying the behavioral patterns of the family system.
There seem to be some identifiable characteristics that make a problem complex enough to be transmuted into a “challenge”. First, the situation is “chaotic” in a formal sense (cause and effect are far apart, and the current conditions are the result of interdependent and often unseen variables). Second, the problem is personally complex (stakeholders have diverse perspectives, personalities, idiosyncrasies, and interests). Third, it is stubborn (the patterns driving them reflect longstanding habitual behavior). Fourth, it is indeterminate (the future is unpredictable, unfamiliar and uncertain). Often when “problems” have some or all of these characteristics, the solutions to the problems are not at hand. In the simple distinction I am proposing, these characteristics move the issue from being a “problem” to be solved into being a “challenge” to grow.
The Limits of the Rational
The challenge here does not lie within the problem that the family is facing (“solutions” may be obvious, but they are unworkable because of family culture). A rational actor on the outside can simply say, “If only….” and provide a half dozen reasonable options that “should” work but never will because of the particular configuration of the family culture. We chalk up the failure to the idiosyncratic irrationality of the people within the family to exercise what appears from the outside to be common sense.
The issue is that to execute on the “reasonable” solutions requires capacities that the family as a whole has not yet developed. For the family to find its path through the thicket, it must develop the capacity to solve not only the problem right in front of it but the parade of problems that will succeed that presenting problem. The challenge lies not in the problem itself, but rather in the implications of the observation that the problem reveals the gaps in the family’s adaptive capacity. It is a problem precisely because the family lacks the capacity to resolve it. If it were easy to solve (as a problem), they wouldn’t have called me to help.
Building Capacity
Winston Churchill defined history as “one damned thing after another.” For many families, that pretty much describes their experience – though to be fair, this “history” is often punctuated by “blessed” events as well. Churchill’s notion raises the question of whether families have the moral vision to move beyond simply muddling through problems (and cocking them up as often as not) or developing a culture that takes problems in stride and uses them as opportunities to grow, learn and love more deeply.
Contrary to myth, building capacity and shifting family culture for many families is not impossible (and in many cases not even that hard) if you know what you are doing, but it does require keen focus and uncommon wisdom. I also believe for reasons I have expounded elsewhere, it requires outside facilitative help by someone who knows what they are doing. There may be a few rare families that can shift their cultures, but for the most part, creating capacity requires some guidance and the discipline of an educated outside perspective. In my experience, culture shifts can even be rapid – and sustainable – if intervention occurs at the right inflection points using the right techniques and interventions to create leverage and polytrophic cascades.
Conclusion
As I work with family leaders, I find myself asking them more and more often whether they are simply solving problems or using the problems in front of them to build capacity. To some extent solving the problem is itself a capacity building exercise, but unless this is made intentional and becomes explicit, it will be lost quickly as the next “damned thing” crops up. In my experience, families that intentionally build their capacity – and have their vision on building skills to address the problems (and challenges) of the future – are much better equipped for the journey. I have found that the alternative is to be caught in an endless game of whack a mole until everyone is simply too tired and fed up to go on together. There are better alternatives.
— December 3, 2015