Bring me the headache, not the feature.

People rarely come to me with a problem. They come with a solution they’ve already picked. “We need an app.” “Can you build us a dashboard?” “We should use AI for this.”

Sometimes they’re right. More often, the thing they asked for is a guess at the cure for a headache they haven’t described yet.

Tell me where it hurts

So I ask about the headache instead. When does it start? Who feels it first? What do you do today to make it go away, and how long does that take?

The answers are usually small and very human. A spreadsheet that three people edit at once. A request that lives in someone’s WhatsApp and dies there. A Monday morning spent copying numbers from one place to another.

Then the fix gets smaller

Once the headache is clear, the fix is often smaller than the original request. Sometimes it’s an app. Sometimes it’s one form, one button and one email every Friday. Sometimes it’s a better way of doing what you already do, with no new software at all.

That’s the part I enjoy most. Not the building, though I love the building. The moment someone says, “Oh. That’s it?” and they’re right. That’s it.

So don’t bring me the feature. Bring me the headache. I’ll take it from there.