The Fish

GOAL:

Find a way to identify the business problem that we are solving in succinct and clear terms.

You drop a fish into a bowl of water. It's never been in a bowl, it has no clue what a bowl is. How does the fish figure out why it keeps bumping into something when it swims? Well, does the fish even understand the concept of bumping into something? Can it be sure that it’s something outside the fish and not something just inherently wrong with the fish?

Let’s say the fish has no idea about what "bumping into something" means…

First thoughts here are to have the fish use logic and it’s surroundings to test the limits on what it is experiencing.

Maybe the fish has a comparison point where it noticed something was different, or maybe the fish has no clue or reference point.

Let’s go with the second assumption.

Let’s say this fish also has no idea how fish communicate with other fish. Every time this fish flips his fin, it’s obviously the “wrong way” to flip it according to responses from the other fish who (unbeknownst to the fish) have been placed into the bowl with him…

The fish flips his fin, the other fish smash him into the side of the bowl, thus making his logical experience of the bowl with which he is in much harder to define, discern and delineate.

So most people might say this fish will never find the bowl, much less be able to accurately examine his circumstances.

But that is most people, and our goal here, is to help to define a way for this fish to determine A WAY to define the actual business problem he is trying to solve (life problem instead of business problem is totally sub-able here in the metaphor.)

Anyway, if this is where we are, what do we do next? What helps us get to our goal, of “A WAY TO DEFINE THE BUSINESS/LIFE PROBLEM WE ARE SOLVING?”

Any suggestions?