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For Organizations

Working Together

How to help organizations problem solve with the meta-problem

Organizations, like teams, are united by a common goal. Ideally, everyone in the organization understands that common goal, and their personal role in helping the team accomplish it.

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However, unlike on teams, the goals of the organization often feel very distant from the actions people take on a daily basis. How can people make good choices if they don't know how "good" is defined for the organization?

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The key insight when using a meta-problem to help an organization thrive is to make sure that decisions are made in the right context. A group of people may have very different ideas about the right choice because they have a different understanding of the likely results or the importance of different outcomes. If one person is thinking about the impacts next week and someone else is planning for 5 years down the road, their decisions will look very different.

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You can help your organization be better at problem solving by asking very specifically what the group would like to be different in the future by comparison to today. The goal of a meta-problem is to identify which problems would be the best to solve, both in terms of the benefits and the costs to achieve the improvements.

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Focusing on outcomes or goals can inspire creativity. Often times we set out to do something and learn that small changes to our plan can have an outsized impact on the things we care about. In fact, the role of uncertainty is perhaps the most important thing to consider when solving a meta-problem for an organization. The right decisions often give more flexibility in the future to react to our ever changing world.

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If you want to learn more about how you can use the meta-problem to help you solve the biggest challenges facing your organization, click on "Contact"and share what goals you have for the future.

Denver, Colorado 

​© 2025 by Zohar Strinka PhD, CAP.

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