Umair Aziz

I never went to business school and never learnt management. I was a software engineer and was entrusted to manage people in 2002 when I took over the family travel business. We were a small team of 15 people and I ended up doing everything – including sales, marketing, operations, hr, accounts and admin. For one – I enjoyed the problems these verticals presented. They were challenging and I was learning new things. Two – I found that I couldn’t trust anyone to do them right – people were either incompetent or lazy. I felt I could do them better, faster than anyone and get better results. Between 2002 and 2005 I worked 18-20 hours a day. In the process I became a control freak. I tasted success – the company grew to 70+ people. I started a bunch of other businesses, took up a position at Creative Chaos and ended up having about 140 people reporting to me. Soon afterwards I became a victim of my own success. Nothing was getting done because everyone expected me to do them. Surely I couldn’t do everything. It was impossible! I ended up spending 2 hours a day at each of my 4 offices – firefighting and delegating problems to people who had little confidence in themselves! We lost a lot of business opportunities, clients and money.2005 was the roughest year I had as an entrepreneur.

During this painful process, I learnt a few things that I’m sure they will never teach you at business school. An engineer at heart, I scientifically analyzed this non-scientific predicament of mine. The problem was with my approach. I was solving problems as an engineer and not as an entrepreneur. Engineers love to immerse themselves in a problem. They like to analyze it, evaluate different options and work out a perfect design and execution plan. Entrepreneurs on the other hand are not quite concerned with the problem – or the solution. They are only focused on who will solve the problem. I studied my business partner Shakir Husain’s problem solving approach. He is a successful entrepreneur and thinks about problems in a very different way than I do. He is not an engineer and is never concerned about the details of a problem. Instead he is always worried about who will be working on them and whether I think they can handle it. I had my doubts about his approach (remember I was a control-freak). However, over time I have realized that Shakir’s approach to problem solving is much more powerful and scalable then my approach.

So like a true geek I present to you Shakir’s three step problem solving algorithm – reverse engineered for all – ready for application to any problem be it financial, administrative, legal, operational or technical. Remember to use it recursively for best results!

Shakir’s 3 Step Problem Solving Algorithm:

Step 1) Who owns the problem?

Step 2) Do I trust them?

Step 3) How do I find an owner I trust?

1) Identifying the owner of a problem is the first step to actually solving the problem. An owner is usually a person or a group of people. It could be your accountant, your quality assurance manager, your development lead, your network support engineers or your developers. If you don’t have an owner – then that is in itself a problem – jump to step 3 and find someone you can trust.

2) Once you have found the owner the next step is to figure out if you trust them? I don’t mean trust in some abstract sense; I mean trust as in do you trust them to solve the problem. Are you confident that they have the time, authority, expertise to solve the problem? Are they passionate enough?I won’t trust Ammad (my network administrator) to solve a payment issue with our Internet Service Provider. He is not an accountant and does not have any authority over our financial accounts. But I will trust him with a network issue. Sometimes Ammad may be busy solving some other issues and may not be able to give time to my problem. In that situation I cannot trust him to solve the problem and will instead assign it to Rashid. I may end up doing it myself if Rashid is also busy or does not have the expertise required to solve the problem.

3) If step 1 and 2 have failed then you must find an owner you can trust. Sometimes you find someone nearby who is willing to take on the challenge. Other times you may need to hire someone or engage an external resource. You could end up doing it yourself. However the bigger the organization grows – the more difficult it gets.

This three step algorithm applied recursively over the past year has helped me in creating successful teams. The key is to make sure you have people who you can trust and that they have the passion to solve your problems. It is important to remind these people that they are the owners and that you are there to help if needed.This is a much better and scalable strategy then the one I followed between 2002-2006 where I would dig deep into the problem, explore the details, weigh the options and worry about each and every execution detail.Letting go is difficult. There is a constant battle between the engineer and the entrepreneur where the engineer wants the details, wants to be analytical and wants to solve the problem while the entrepreneur wants to apply the 3 step algorithm and grow. I still end up assigning quite a bit to myself however a lot will change in the next couple of quarters. I want to remind all the people I trust that I need their support – now more than ever. And I thank Shakir for showing me the light.