Top 17 'Problem-Reframing' Cognitive Skills to learn for Innovating in a Stagnant Industry in 2025 - Goh Ling Yong
Ever felt like you're running on a treadmill in your career? You're putting in the work, you're following the playbook, but the scenery never changes. This is the reality for countless professionals stuck in stagnant industries, where "we've always done it this way" is the unofficial company motto. The pressure to innovate is immense, but the path forward seems foggy, blocked by outdated processes and a risk-averse culture.
The common approach is to brainstorm "solutions." We gather in meeting rooms, whiteboard ideas, and try to force a breakthrough. But what if the problem isn't a lack of solutions, but a lack of understanding the real problem? In 2025 and beyond, the most valuable professionals won't be the ones with the quickest answers; they'll be the ones who can ask the most transformative questions. This is the art of problem-reframing—the cognitive skill of changing your perspective to unlock entirely new avenues for innovation.
This isn't just a fluffy concept; it's a collection of practical, learnable mental models that can turn a dead-end challenge into a launchpad for growth. By deliberately changing the lens through which you view a problem, you can break free from conventional thinking and see possibilities that were invisible before. Here are 17 essential problem-reframing skills to cultivate for thriving in any industry, no matter how stuck it seems.
1. Questioning the Question
Before you dive into finding an answer, step back and scrutinize the question itself. Often, the problem we're given is just a symptom or a poorly framed starting point. Challenging the initial brief isn't about being difficult; it's about ensuring you're solving the right problem from the get-go.
Is the goal really to "increase sales by 10%," or is it to "increase customer loyalty so they become repeat buyers and advocates"? The first leads to short-term tactics like discounts. The second leads to long-term strategies focused on experience, community, and value. The way you frame the core question dictates the entire universe of possible solutions.
Tip: Next time you're given a task, ask, "What is the problem behind this problem?" or "If we solved this perfectly, what bigger goal would it help us achieve?" This simple shift moves you from a task-doer to a strategic thinker.
2. Assumption Busting
Every industry is built on a mountain of assumptions—unspoken beliefs about customers, the market, technology, and what's possible. Innovators are expert assumption detectives. They systematically identify these assumptions and challenge them, asking, "What if that wasn't true?"
Think of the taxi industry's assumption that people had to hail a cab on the street or call a dispatcher. Uber and Lyft questioned that. The hotel industry assumed people wanted a standardized, concierge-led experience. Airbnb questioned that. Your industry is filled with similar "unquestionable truths" that are waiting to be busted.
Tip: Grab a piece of paper and list every assumption you can think of about a problem you're facing. For example: "Customers want more features," "Our process is the most efficient," "We can't lower costs further." Now, go through them one by one and imagine a world where the opposite is true.
3. Boundary Examination
Problems rarely exist in a vacuum, but we often treat them that way by imposing artificial boundaries. We think about "our department's budget" or "industry regulations" as rigid walls. Problem-reframing involves examining these boundaries. Are they real, or just perceived? What happens if we push on them?
A classic example is a marketing team trying to create a campaign with a tiny budget. The boundary is "we don't have enough money for a big TV ad." By examining that boundary, they might reframe the problem to: "How can we get our message out with zero media spend?" This leads to viral marketing, guerrilla tactics, and community-building—often more effective than the TV ad in the first place.
Tip: Ask "What constraints are we assuming are fixed?" and "What if this boundary was flexible, even just by 10%?" You might find that many "rules" are more like guidelines.
4. Analogical Thinking
Sometimes the best ideas for your industry are already thriving in a completely different one. Analogical thinking is the skill of looking at how others have solved a structurally similar problem in an unrelated context. It’s about finding a useful comparison that sparks a new idea.
How does a Formula 1 pit crew change four tires in under two seconds? Their process of extreme choreography and specialized roles could inspire a hospital to streamline its emergency room patient intake. How does a subscription-based software company retain its users? Their strategies might help a traditional manufacturing company create a recurring revenue model for maintenance and support.
Tip: Frame your problem in an abstract way. Instead of "How do we make our checkout process faster?" ask, "How do we reduce friction in a multi-step process?" Then, look for inspiration everywhere: nature, logistics, hospitality, entertainment, etc.
5. Reverse Engineering the Problem
Instead of starting from the problem and moving toward a solution, start with the ideal outcome and work backward. This is also known as "inversion" or "starting with the end in mind." By visualizing a perfect future state, you can more clearly identify the critical path to get there.
If your problem is "high employee turnover," the traditional approach is to analyze why people are leaving. The reverse-engineering approach is to imagine a future where your company is a "Best Place to Work" with a 95% retention rate. What does that reality look like? Happy employees, clear growth paths, amazing managers, flexible work. Now you can work backward and build the specific initiatives needed to create that reality.
Tip: Write a "press release" from one year in the future announcing that you've successfully solved your problem. Describe the outcome in vivid detail. This document becomes your strategic blueprint.
6. Zooming In and Zooming Out
To truly understand a problem, you need to be able to shift your perspective fluidly. "Zooming in" means examining the minute details of the problem—the specific user click, the line of code, the wording in a customer service script. "Zooming out" means seeing the big picture—the market trends, the competitive landscape, the entire customer journey.
Innovators don't live at just one level. They can zoom in to see that a confusing button is causing checkout abandonment, and then zoom out to realize that their entire e-commerce platform is misaligned with their target demographic's mobile-first habits. This ability to connect the micro-details to the macro-strategy is a superpower.
Tip: Schedule two types of thinking time. "Micro-time" to get hands-on with the details, and "Macro-time" to step back, read industry reports, and think about the system as a whole.
7. Empathy Mapping
You might think you know your customers, but do you truly understand their world? An empathy map is a tool to go beyond demographics and get into your user's head. It visualizes what they are Saying, Thinking, Feeling, and Doing in relation to your problem.
This process often reveals a disconnect. A customer might say "This product is fine," but be thinking "This is so confusing, I wish there was a better way," and feeling frustrated, while doing a series of convoluted workarounds to get the job done. Identifying that frustration is the starting point for true innovation, not just incremental improvement.
Tip: Create a simple four-quadrant chart (Says, Thinks, Feels, Does) and fill it out based on customer interviews, surveys, and support tickets. The insights will reframe the problem from "add a feature" to "alleviate this specific frustration."
8. The "5 Whys" Technique
A deceptively simple but powerful tool for getting to the root cause of an issue. When a problem occurs, you ask "Why?" five times (or as many times as needed) to peel back the layers of symptoms and find the core issue.
For example: "The delivery was late." 1. Why? The truck left the warehouse late. 2. Why? The products weren't packed on time. 3. Why? The packing station was waiting for a component. 4. Why? The component wasn't ordered on time. 5. Why? The inventory system doesn't automatically flag low stock for that component (the root cause). Now you can solve the real problem (fix the system) instead of just the symptom (tell the driver to drive faster).
Tip: Use this in team meetings when a problem is being discussed. It prevents jumping to superficial solutions and forces a deeper, more systemic diagnosis.
9. The "Jobs To Be Done" Framework
This framework, popularized by Clay Christensen, posits that customers don't buy products; they "hire" them to do a "job." Understanding the fundamental job your customer is trying to accomplish allows you to see the competitive landscape and the problem itself in a new light.
People don't want a quarter-inch drill bit; they want a quarter-inch hole. The drill bit is just one solution. A laser or a punch could also do the job. When you reframe the problem around the "job" (e.g., "help me hang a picture perfectly on the first try"), you open up innovation beyond just making a better drill bit. Maybe the solution is a new type of adhesive hook or a projection system.
Tip: Ask your customers: "The last time you used our product, what were you ultimately trying to accomplish?" Their answers will reveal the true "job" you're being hired for.
10. Semantic Restructuring
The words we use to describe a problem shape our thinking. By consciously changing the language, we can change our perspective. This is semantic restructuring. It’s about playing with the verbs, nouns, and framing of your problem statement.
Is your challenge to "reduce customer complaints" or "increase customer delight"? The first is negative and reactive; the second is positive and proactive. Is the goal to "cut costs" or to "improve resource efficiency"? The first feels like a sacrifice, while the second feels like a smart optimization challenge. The vocabulary you use matters.
Tip: Write down your problem statement. Now, rewrite it five different ways, changing the key verbs and nouns each time. See how each new version makes you feel and what different ideas it sparks.
11. First-Principles Thinking
Popularized by thinkers like Aristotle and Elon Musk, this is the practice of breaking a problem down into its most fundamental, undeniable truths—the "first principles"—and building a solution up from there. It's the ultimate tool for avoiding "we've always done it this way" thinking.
When Musk wanted to build rockets, he didn't look at the cost of existing rockets. He asked, "What are the raw materials that make up a rocket, and what is their cost on the open market?" The cost was a tiny fraction of a finished rocket. The problem then became, "How do we assemble these materials into a rocket ourselves?" This reframing from "buy expensive rockets" to "build rockets from scratch" is what led to SpaceX.
Tip: For your problem, ask: "What are the absolute fundamental truths at play here? What do we know for sure is true?" Strip away all industry jargon and assumptions until you're left with the core building blocks.
12. Constraint Embracing
Most people see constraints (time, budget, resources) as obstacles. Innovators see them as a focusing mechanism. Instead of fighting constraints, they embrace them. This forces creativity and eliminates lazy, expensive solutions.
The challenge "Design the best website possible" is paralyzing. The challenge "Design the best one-page website that can be built in a day with a $100 budget" is a fantastic creative prompt. The constraints force you to prioritize what truly matters and come up with clever, high-impact solutions.
Tip: Deliberately add a tough constraint to your problem. "How would we solve this with half the budget?" "What if we had to launch this in one week?" This "impossible" constraint can often unlock the most elegant solution.
13. Provocation and Movement
Developed by Edward de Bono, this technique involves introducing a deliberately provocative or even illogical statement to jolt your brain out of its normal thinking patterns. The goal isn't to find a correct statement, but to use the "provocation" to generate "movement" to new ideas.
For example, in a car company, you might make the provocative statement: "The car has square wheels." This is obviously absurd. But from here, you can generate movement. Why are wheels round? For a smooth ride. What if you didn't need a smooth ride everywhere? This could lead to ideas about advanced suspension systems that adapt to any terrain, effectively making the wheel shape less important.
Tip: Start a sentence with "What if..." and finish it with something that seems ridiculous. "What if our customers paid us to take their data?" "What if our factory had no roof?" Don't judge the statement; just follow the train of thought it creates.
14. Abductive Reasoning
We're familiar with deductive (logic-based) and inductive (pattern-based) reasoning. Abductive reasoning is the third, less-known sibling. It's the process of forming the most plausible explanation for an incomplete set of observations. It's the logic of "what if?"
If you see a customer using your software in a strange, unintended way (the observation), deductive reasoning won't help. Abductive reasoning asks, "What is the most likely 'job' this customer is trying to do that would lead them to this behavior?" This creative leap can uncover entirely new use cases and market opportunities for your product. It’s about generating the best hypothesis, not proving a fact.
Tip: When you see a surprising data point or piece of user feedback, don't dismiss it as an outlier. Instead, ask your team: "What's the most interesting and plausible story that could explain this?"
15. Negative Brainstorming (Inversion)
Instead of asking how to achieve success, you ask how to guarantee failure. This mental model, also known as inversion, is incredibly effective for identifying risks and uncovering hidden obstacles you hadn't considered.
If the goal is to "launch a successful new product," negative brainstorming asks, "What could we do to ensure this product is a catastrophic failure?" The answers might be: ignore customer feedback, use confusing marketing, have a buggy app, offer terrible customer support, set the price way too high. You now have a crystal-clear checklist of what not to do.
Tip: Host a "pre-mortem" meeting before starting a big project. Assume the project has failed spectacularly one year from now. Have everyone write down all the reasons why it failed. This is a safe, effective way to surface anxieties and potential pitfalls upfront.
16. Systems Thinking
Problems rarely have a single cause. Systems thinking is the ability to see the problem not as an isolated event, but as a component of a larger, interconnected system. It’s about understanding the relationships, feedback loops, and unintended consequences within the whole.
A company might try to "fix" its slow sales by hiring more salespeople. A systems thinker would look at the entire system: marketing lead quality, product-market fit, onboarding processes, customer support capacity, and the compensation plan. They might realize that hiring more salespeople will only make the problem worse by straining the support team and leading to unhappy customers, which hurts long-term sales. The real leverage point might be improving marketing leads, not just adding more sellers.
Tip: Before proposing a solution, try to map out the system it will affect. Who and what will this change touch? What are the potential second- and third-order effects?
17. Scenario Planning
The future is uncertain. Instead of trying to predict one specific outcome, scenario planning involves creating several plausible—but different—future scenarios. This helps you build more resilient and adaptable strategies.
For a retail company, instead of just planning for "steady growth," they could plan for several futures: a "Booming Economy" scenario, a "Deep Recession" scenario, a "Supply Chain Chaos" scenario, and a "Digital Dominance" scenario where physical stores become obsolete. By thinking through how they would respond to each, they can identify "no-regret" moves that will serve them well no matter what happens. This reframes the problem from "how to predict the future" to "how to be ready for multiple futures."
Tip: Identify two major, uncertain driving forces in your industry (e.g., regulation and consumer behavior). Create a 2x2 matrix with these forces as the axes. This gives you four distinct future scenarios to plan for.
Your Mindset is Your Greatest Asset
Innovating in a stagnant industry feels like an uphill battle, but it’s not impossible. As I often discuss with professionals like those I coach, the bottleneck is rarely a lack of resources or technology. It's a lack of cognitive flexibility. The 17 skills above aren't magic tricks; they are trainable mental models that shift you from being a problem-solver to a problem-framer.
Mastering these skills won't happen overnight. The key is to start small. Pick just one of these techniques—like the "5 Whys" or "Assumption Busting"—and consciously apply it to a small problem you're facing this week. Notice how it changes the conversation and the types of ideas that emerge.
The future belongs to those who can see the world differently. By learning to reframe the challenges in front of you, you're not just finding better solutions—you're charting a new course for your career and your industry.
What's a problem you're currently facing at work? Try reframing it using one of the techniques above and share your new perspective in the comments below!
About the Author
Goh Ling Yong is a content creator and digital strategist sharing insights across various topics. Connect and follow for more content:
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