How You Should Be Thinking in Stage 1 (Problem Management)
Stage 1 is where most teams fail - not because it is hard, but because it feels unnecessary.
People believe they already understand the problem.
Stage 1 exists to prove whether that belief is actually true.
Your Job in Stage 1
Your job in Stage 1 is not to solve anything.
It is to:
- slow the conversation down
- separate signal from noise
- turn vague frustration into something testable
If you leave Stage 1 with certainty, you did it wrong.
You should leave with clarity, not confidence.
The Kind of Thinking Required
Stage 1 requires a specific mindset:
- sceptical, not cynical
- curious, not defensive
- precise, not clever
You are interrogating reality, not advocating for an idea.
If you find yourself arguing for a solution, stop.
Complaints Are Not Problems
Most inputs at this stage are complaints:
- “This process is broken.”
- “Customers hate this.”
- “This takes too long.”
Complaints describe experience.
A problem describes:
- what is happening
- to whom
- under what conditions
- with what observable impact
Your task is to translate complaints into problems without changing their meaning.
Evidence Beats Agreement
Consensus is not evidence.
Stage 1 forces teams to ask:
- What do we actually know?
- What have we observed?
- What data exists?
- What is assumed?
Strong agreement based on weak evidence is a warning sign.
Symptoms vs Root Problems
Many problems are symptoms of something else.
For example:
- Errors increase → training issue?
- Cycle time increases → bottleneck?
- Complaints rise → mismatch of expectations?
Stage 1 does not require you to find the root cause.
It requires you to avoid mistaking symptoms for causes.
What You Are Explicitly Not Doing
In Stage 1, you are not:
- proposing solutions
- defining requirements
- estimating effort
- discussing architecture
Those conversations feel productive.
They are also premature.
Common Traps
Watch for these failure modes:
- Jumping to "obvious" fixes
- Treating senior opinions as facts
- Collapsing multiple problems into one
- Writing problems in solution language
If any of these appear, slow down.
Signals You Are Rushing
You are probably rushing Stage 1 if:
- the problem fits in a single vague sentence
- evidence is described but not shown
- people say “we all know this already”
- the same issue has come up before
These are signals to dig deeper, not move on.
What Good Looks Like
A good Stage 1 output:
- is boring to read
- contains no opinions
- makes disagreement explicit
- could be understood by someone not in the room
If it feels impressive, it is probably hiding ambiguity.
The Discipline to Carry Forward
Stage 1 teaches a habit you will need later:
Do not move forward while meaning is still unstable.
That habit is the foundation of the entire system.
Next, we will look at How You Should Be Thinking in Stage 2 (Project Planning).