Eat Problems for Breakfast.
Creativity isn't inspiration.
It's practice.
Years ago, I asked a friend a question I've never forgotten.
He was one of those rare people who seemed endlessly creative. The kind of person who could look at almost anything. A business challenge, a mechanical problem, a blank sheet of paper, and instinctively see possibilities that everyone else missed. I wanted to know his secret.
His answer surprised me.
He told me that every morning he tried to solve a different kind of problem. Not because anyone asked him to, but because it kept his mind sharp. He believed that creativity wasn't something you waited for. It was something you exercised. Every new problem forced him to think differently, and over time those repetitions strengthened the same mental muscles that made him more creative.
That conversation changed how I thought about my own career.
At the time, I considered myself a designer. I cared deeply about typography, composition, user experience, technology, and craftsmanship. But the longer I worked, the more I realized those things weren't what I enjoyed most. They were simply the medium through which I solved problems.
Over the years, the problems themselves became more interesting than the deliverables.
Instead of asking how to design a better website, I found myself asking why the website wasn't accomplishing its purpose. Instead of debating logos or color palettes, I became more interested in whether the company actually understood who it was becoming. What looked like a portfolio problem often turned out to be an organizational issue. What appeared to be a marketing challenge was frequently a question of strategy, governance, or operating models.
The visible work was rarely the real work.
That realization gradually changed the direction of my career. While I began as a creative professional, each new role pulled me further upstream. Design led to user experience. User experience led to customer research. Research led to brand strategy. Brand strategy expanded into portfolio architecture, digital transformation, enterprise web strategy, creative operations, organizational design, and, more recently, helping businesses prepare their knowledge ecosystems for an AI-driven future.
The disciplines changed, but the process never really did.
Every worthwhile challenge still begins the same way. You define the problem before you rush toward a solution. You research until assumptions give way to evidence. You explore possibilities before making decisions. You build. You test. You refine. Whether the outcome is a brand architecture, an enterprise website, a creative operating model, or a content strategy, the underlying approach remains remarkably consistent.
Looking back, I no longer think of myself primarily as a designer, although design shaped the way I think.
I think of myself as a strategic problem solver.
Design simply taught me how to ask better questions.
In my experience, the most valuable question is almost never, “How do we solve this?” It's, “Are we solving the right problem?”
That's the question that has guided nearly every meaningful project I've worked on. It's also the reason I enjoy this work as much today as I did when I first started. The tools continue to evolve. The technologies change. Entire industries reinvent themselves.
The challenge remains the same.
Understand the problem well enough, and the right solution usually becomes obvious.
Solve the WRONG problem, and even brilliant execution won't save you.
So, tell me—
What problem are we really trying to solve?