Problem-Solving Essentials:

Bridging Gaps Across Teams

Problem-solving is a core competency; for a Business Analyst (BA), it’s the key to impacting an organization. My career path, winding through renewable energy, travel, airlines, refunds, entertainment and retail, has taught me that every industry is unique, but the tools of a BA are adaptable. We’re the architects of clarity, the facilitators who see potential where others see gridlock. Adapting advanced skills like rigorous risk assessment and comprehensive business modeling enables seamless transitions from ideation to impactful solutions.

The Conversational Edge of Problem Solving

Problem-solving as a Business Analyst (BA) isn’t as simple as “just asking the right questions.” While questions are essential, the real value comes from understanding when and how to ask them. Effective questioning requires preparation, context processing, and intent.

The Role of Context Before the Conversation

Before stepping into a discussion, the BA’s work begins:

• Processing the Context: Understand the problem landscape. Analyze data, requirements, and stakeholder priorities to form a clear baseline.
• Scripting with Intent: Craft questions not as open-ended shots in the dark, but as tools to unpack specific aspects of the problem.
• Identifying Gaps: Know where the audience already holds the answers and where discovery is still needed.

This preparation allows questions to add value rather than feel like an interrogation. Context-specific questions either:

• Prompt the audience to surface knowledge they already possess but may not have articulated yet, or
• Open pathways for further discovery where answers are incomplete or unavailable.

A conversation devoid of this preparation risks exhausting your audience, as continuous questioning without personal input can feel directionless and burdensome.

Having Your Own “Head in the Answer”

The best conversations occur when the BA can initiate conversation that feels to the audience like they are interested and invested in the answer. This requires:

• Demonstrating Investment: Show that you’ve processed the problem enough to engage meaningfully. Questions become a shared exploration rather than a one-sided interrogation.
• Providing Anchors: Offer insights or potential starting points to ground the discussion, like:
  “From what I’ve observed, there seems to be a recurring delay around Step 3, particularly where inputs rely on external teams. I want to make sure I’m not missing something could you help clarify what you’re seeing from your perspective?”
• Balancing Inquiry and Input: Blend curiosity with contributions. Thoughtful hypotheses, observations, or stories of similar but different solutions reassure stakeholders that you’re actively “in the problem” with them.

Opening Areas for Further Discovery

In situations where gaps remain, the role of the BA is to help the team acknowledge the unknowns while mapping a path forward. For example:

“From what I can see, we don’t yet have a clear understanding of how these external dependencies are impacting timelines. I’ll need your help to pin this down, what’s the best way we can unpack this together so we don’t miss anything important?”

This approach signals that further progress requires their expertise while inviting cooperation. It removes ambiguity about who needs to contribute and reinforces the idea that solving the problem is a shared responsibility.

Experience-Driven Problem Solving

Managing people and solving complex problems are areas where I bring both breadth and depth of experience. My foundation in Hospitality Management and Technical Field Service Management, taught me the importance of people-first approaches, while my success as a Solution Consulting Manager including industry recognized awards refined my ability to balance collaboration, delivery, and leadership.

That said, I’ve observed that hierarchy can often slow down the evolution of solutions instead of accelerating them. This bottleneck, I’ve found, comes from a key difference in how managers and analysts approach problems.

When a requirement reaches me, I default to a process-driven mindset:

• Breaking the Problem Down: I immediately begin applying my BA toolkit breaking the problem into clear, manageable chunks that reduce complexity and create actionable pathways.
• Holistic Prioritization: Once simplified, I take a step back to assess how priorities and interdependencies impact delivery as a whole. This ensures the team’s efforts align with broader goals.
• Framework-Driven Progress: Rather than relying on top-down delegation, I use frameworks (Agile sprints, vertical slices, and backlog prioritization) to move challenges forward. This enables the team to self-organize and work collaboratively to solve a defined portion of the problem.

Creating Space for Strategic Value

Having a structured, repeatable approach to problem solving frees up valuable mental capacity. This allows me to:

• Identify opportunities to build relational equity with team members.
• Anticipate blockers and deliver value in advance clearing paths for others before problems escalate.
• Focus on strategic alignment, ensuring that solutions meet both immediate needs and long-term objectives.

For example, when faced with complex stakeholder requirements, my process allows me to come to the table with clarity and direction:

“Here’s how I’ve broken down the problem, the areas where clarity is missing, and the opportunities I see for us to move forward. Does this align with your perspective?”

This approach creates momentum, I would like to say that it doesn't overwhelm the audience, enabling solutions to evolve naturally while maintaining team engagement, but in fast paced environments you can't always get acceptance for enough meetings to chunk it out as much as you might like.

Leadership Without the Title

At some point in a learning journey, there’s a choice that fundamentally shapes how we interact with the problems we face. I started out in sales roles, connecting with people, understanding their challenges, and offering solutions. Over time, as you learn more about problems, there’s a pull to live in them why wouldn’t you? If those problems are the bread and butter of your work, and solving them brings you security and growth, it’s natural to rinse, repeat, and scale. Some people teach others to deliver those same solutions; others move on, carrying their experience into new problems, problems that are similar but contextually different.

This second path the willingness to start fresh requires a higher mental load. It’s harder to face problems you haven’t seen before than to stick with ones you know well. Yet recruitment processes often chase after lost experience, trying to put the same solution back into the system they just lost. In a world that values consistency while constantly changing, collision is inevitable.

I’ve learned to solve problems in environments where the problems were secondary to what people really wanted:

• In hospitality, people didn’t want solutions; they wanted human connection.
• In travel and aviation, they didn’t want to slow down; they just wanted to go, go, go.
• In arenas, problems had to be between midnight and 7pm because outside those times the focus was on delivering for the fans in crucial moment.
• In luxury retail, solutions needed to stay out of sight, quiet and seamless.
• In renewable energy, the focus wasn’t on optimizing flows it was on building bigger, faster.

Every problem taught me something new, but this constant adaptation wasn’t easy. It demanded a tolerance for waste, from learning things that might never see their full potential. Eighty percent of what I’ve learned could have been used more efficiently, but the other 20%? That 20% scaled at exactly the right moment and kept me in demand.

The Realization: We Are All Products

The clearest lesson I’ve taken from years of experience across industries is this: to deliver the best return on investment for the end-to-end customer journey, you must first interrupt the flow of a problem-aware, solution-unaware audience. You need to offer them a solution faster than they could find it themselves, and then augment that value over time with add-ons that deepen the relationship. To stand out among competitors, you need either:

• A barrier to entry that locks out competition, or
• The ability to deliver value in advance which is trust building work that funnels prospects toward your core offering.

This realization that we are all products in a flowing system serves as a reminder: we must constantly build relationship equity. No matter our title or tenure, we cannot assume we’re beyond adding value to the processes we manage.

Post-Learning: Turning Lessons into Strategy

Effective problem-solving goes on after implementation it evolves through post-learning. Taking a step back to reflect on outcomes, both successful and flawed, creates the space needed to distill meaningful insights. This retrospection is less analytical feeling like you are allowing time for your learnings to settle. With that space, patterns emerge, helping you identify what worked well and should be repeated, as well as what could be done differently next time. This ongoing cycle of reflection and adjustment transforms quick fixes into sustainable strategies.

Seeing Problems Through a Traveler’s Lens

Every project, like every journey, comes with its own detours unexpected challenges, surprising discoveries, and moments where the path forward isn’t always clear. Traveling taught me that the further you go, the harder it is to return. I’ve made that journey back, but the weight of my decisions dragged me away again. There’s a sacrifice that comes with choosing to see the world beyond your comfort zone, to learn more than you might have wanted to know. But with that sacrifice comes growth and the ability to see problems differently.

For me, this mindset has shaped how I approach problem-solving. Like a seasoned traveler, I bring curiosity and open-mindedness to every project. I don’t settle for surface-level answers. I look for creative solutions that others might miss, those that lie beyond the familiar route. At the same time, I know that getting “there” isn’t enough. You need to process what you’ve learned and decide how to move forward.

The reality is, if you’ve never stepped outside the town you grew up in literally or figuratively it’s easy to get stuck in the first problem you feel comfortable solving. Growth requires a choice: to push further, even when it’s uncomfortable, and to embrace what you learn along the way.

This traveler’s lens has made me not just an analyst but a changemaker, someone who combines data, dialogue, and perspective to drive impactful outcomes. I don’t just solve problems; I explore them, reframe them, and find ways to turn them into opportunities for lasting change.

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Conclusion: Why Problem-Solving is the Pulse of Progress

At its core, problem-solving starts as a quest to find answers once and move on; to then optimize what you learn, requires the ability to stay engaged, curious, and adaptable no matter how familiar or foreign the challenge feels. From navigating the complexities of sustainable tech to understanding the human nuances of retail and hospitality, I’ve learned that every solution begins with a choice: the choice to step into discomfort, to see beyond the obvious, and to remain open to what the journey has to teach.

The work of a Business Analyst includes frameworks and tools but it’s about perspective, shared visions, balancing processes with people, and learning to manage the detours as part of the road forward. Whether through rigorous analysis, relational awareness, or a traveler’s mindset, problem-solving becomes the driving force behind meaningful, lasting progress.

For those who thrive on new perspectives, these challenges are more than hurdles; they are stories worth telling and solutions worth sharing. This is the pulse of progress: the ability to embrace change, learn deeply, and transform every lesson into a strategy for the road ahead.