The Problem on the Board
In Vistage, we use a process called issue processing. A member puts a problem on the board, the group asks questions, lots and lots and lots of questions. After that round of questions, we go back and ask both the room and the member if we still want to focus on that initial problem. What I’ve learned after years of running these sessions: 95% of the time, the problem on the board is not the problem we end up solving.
It’s not because members come in confused. They’re sharp, experienced leaders and in their mind, they’ve defined the problem they need help with fairly clearly. What I’ve noticed is that when something is urgent and loud and sitting on your chest, you tend to solve for the symptom. The real issue is usually quieter and it often takes a different kind of thinking to find it.
That’s where inspiration comes in, less as a mood or a motivational boost (though sometimes it can show up in that way, too), but as a cognitive tool. Inspiration used in this way cuts through the noise to help you see what’s actually in front of you.
The Mirror Problem
A member showed up at a meeting very frustrated. She told us that her team was disengaged, productivity was slipping, energy was low, and she wanted to know how to reinvigorate her employees. It was a real problem, and she’d already started brainstorming solutions — team events, recognition programs, restructured one-on-ones.
As the group asked questions, something shifted. It became clear that her employees weren’t the source of the energy problem. They were mirroring it. The disengagement she was seeing in them was a reflection of what they were seeing in her.
She didn’t need to reinvigorate her team. She needed to reinvigorate herself.
Every solution she’d been building was aimed at the wrong target. Reactive problem solving — the kind that kicks in when we’re overwhelmed — asks how do we fix this? It moves fast, feels productive, and addresses what’s visible. The challenge is that in its haste, it often bypasses the question that matters which is what’s actually broken?
Reactive vs. Generative
Inspired leaders ask a different question: what does this make possible?
I love that question because it’s wildly powerful. It also can provide a ton of clarity. Sometimes we do the things we think we should do. We’re following a specific path, sometimes blindly, sometimes just because we’re used to putting one foot in front of the other. We’re going to grow by another 10%, open an adjacent market, hire for these specific roles. I love the question because it’s a fundamentally different cognitive posture that creates just enough distance from the urgency to see the problem clearly. In Sparking Greatness, I write about Spaciousness: the idea that we need room to think, room to breathe, room to notice what we’re actually dealing with before we start solving. Inspiration creates that room. It pulls you out of reactive mode and into something more generative.
Reactive mode is self-referential. When we’re stressed and scrambling, we’re often solving for our own discomfort as much as we’re solving for the actual problem (I’m also guilty as charged here). We want the anxiety to stop, so we move toward the fastest available solution. Inspiration interrupts that loop. It shifts your attention outward to the people involved, to the larger context, to what’s possible rather than what’s threatening. The solution becomes a pull instead of a push, a running towards instead of a running away.
How Inspiration Changes What You Hear
This is also what makes inspired leaders better at receiving information. When you’re in reactive mode, data that doesn’t support your existing framing tends to get filtered out. When you’re inspired — genuinely curious, genuinely engaged — you’re more likely to hear the thing that changes everything, like a group of peers asking questions that surface the real issue instead of the presenting one.
The Distance Between Problems
The member who came in wanting to fix her team left with a very different agenda. It took courage to sit with that reframe and to stop pointing outward and look inward instead. The good news is that she had a room full of people who were with her, not to validate her original diagnosis, but to help her see more clearly.
That’s the practical value of inspiration in problem solving. It doesn’t make the problems easier. It makes you better at identifying which problem you’re actually trying to solve.
Before you build the solution, it’s worth asking: is this the real issue, or is it the loudest one? Those are rarely the same thing and the distance between them is where inspiration does its best work.