How to Write a Problem Statement: Avoid These Common Mistakes

How to Write a Problem Statement: Top Mistakes and How to Fix Them

Writing a Problem Statement that Gets Results

1) How to Write a Problem Statement: Mission

What You Do and Why It Matters

Common Mistakes in Defining the Mission

• Mistake: A mission like “We help people find homes” is too generic.

• Negative Consequence: When the mission is vague, stakeholders are left unclear about who you serve and what makes your approach unique. This can lead to misaligned strategies and missed funding opportunities.

• Fix: Be precise about your target population, services, and core values. Clearly articulate these elements to ensure every part of your problem statement supports your mission.

• Mistake: Traditional mission statements often focus solely on the "what" and "how" of an organization's activities, neglecting the crucial "why."

• Negative consequence: You miss an opportunities to both clarify your organization's purpose and inspire stakeholders to connect with your mission on an emotional level.

• Fix: Our strategy emphasizes the emotional and social outcomes of your work, creating a more compelling and resonant narrative.

2) How to Write a Problem Statement: #1 Goal

Setting a Clear, Measurable Objective

Common Mistakes in Defining the Goal

• Mistake: Using a goal like “Improve housing access” fails to specify the outcome.

• Negative Consequence: This lack of specificity makes it hard to measure progress and can result in scattered efforts that don’t address the real challenge.

• Fix: Use a SMART which is a specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound goal.

• Mistake: Using words or phrases imprecisely (e.g., using phrases like “suitable vendor” and “suitable partner” interchangeably or not defining observable indicators for what “suitable” means precisely)

• Negative Consequence: Everyone may not understand what you really mean and have different ideas of what the goal is, resulting in misalignment and wasted time.

• Fix: Use terms consistently and define ambiguous terms in plain english

• Mistake: Listing several objectives simultaneously (e.g., “more partners, better training, and increased outreach”) or relying too heavily on intuition when setting goals.

• Negative Consequences: This dilutes focus and confuses your audience about what the primary challenge really is. Your project begins to sound like a laundry list. Furthermore, choosing the wrong goal can lead to selecting unimportant goals, resulting in wasted time on projects that lack significant impact.

• Fix: Concentrate your efforts on a single, important goal that requires sustained improvement. To identify this goal, assess your confidence in achieving it based on your current status and progress. Consider the emotional and financial implications of not reaching this goal for your organization and community. Prioritize goals where your confidence is lower but the potential consequences are more significant.

• Mistake: Making decisions based solely on intuition or confirmation bias, while also failing to properly weigh the quality of different evidence types.

• Negative Consequence: It increases the risk of poor decision-making, leading to missed opportunities and misallocation of resources. Furthermore, it can result in inaccurate predictions and flawed fundamental assumptions about your business, customers, or market.

• Fix: Validate your analysis with concrete evidence and use the evidence quality ladder.

3) How to Write a Problem Statement: Top Challenge

Defining the Top Challenge

Common Mistakes in Identifying the Top Challenge

• Mistake: Jumping into solutions without first understanding current initiatives and their shortcomings — or being too vague about what was done today (”We tried everything, but nothing worked”)

• Consequence: Without a clear overview of ongoing efforts, stakeholders may inadvertently suggest actions that are already being implemented or don’t make sense within your context. This oversight can lead to a loss of context regarding the deeper challenges—such as why current solutions aren't effective and what constraints are hindering progress toward your goals. The additional benefit is that this helps you validate whether the goal you’re focused on is truly important goals, which have ongoing investment of time and effort.

• Fix: Map out today’s workflow by detailing the concrete steps you are currently taking to address the problem. This will provide context, highlight the deeper issues at play, and demonstrate that your approach is systematic and evidence-based.

• Mistake: It’s easy to focus on surface-level symptoms (e.g., ”low productivity”) or choose broad, important-sounding challenges (e.g., ”workplace culture”).

• Negative consequence: This can lead to misdiagnosing the fundamental issue or concentrating on less relevant problems. Additionally, it can be difficult to contextualize where or when the problem occurs, resulting in less precise solutions.

• Fix: Instead, use a framework. For instance, prioritize the biggest bottleneck in your workflow impeding goal achievement.

• Mistake: Failing to establish clear criteria for evaluating proposed solutions.

• Negative Consequence: Without clear criteria, proposed solutions may be misaligned with your actual constraints, leading to impractical recommendations and ineffective interventions

• Fix: Develop solution criteria that outline the essential conditions any viable solution must meet. This ensures that proposed solutions are realistic given your constraints—such as time, financial resources, staffing capacity, and the needs of stakeholders who must accept the solution.

• Mistake: Overlooking the underlying factors that contribute to the persistence of the challenge. For instance, just saying “companies don’t want to hire our clients” without investigating further — such as specific employer concerns or which employers.

• Negative Consequence: This oversight can prevent effective problem-solving and hinder learning from prior attempts, leading to repeated failures in achieving your primary goal.

• Fix: Identify Root causes: (1) Reflect on successful and failed attempts to reaching your primary goal and why the goal remains unmet. (2) cluster reasons into 1-3 root causes. (3) Identify the "why" behind the root cause based on your efforts to address it, exposing critical levers

Conclusion: Problem Statement Worksheet