Stop working harder. Start solving better problems.

Most people don’t get stuck because they aren’t working hard enough. They get stuck because they’re solving the same low-value problems over and over. In this episode, I break down how to choose better problems, prove your value, and make your next promotion an easy decision for your boss.

New Game Careers helps professionals get promoted, hired, and make smarter career moves by building the skills that decision-makers actually reward. 

This channel covers career growth, workplace strategy, promotable skills, proof of value, leadership development, and resume strategy. It’s built from real experience going from entry-level to leading 100+ people as a 3x director. 

Videos break down how careers actually work and give you practical ways to build proof, solve better problems, and remove the guesswork from your next move. 

Get the exact steps to your next career move at:

newgamecareers.com. 
linkedin.com/company/new-game-careers

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Do you want to throw your laptop directly at the wall when you hear vague advice like take more initiative? Or someone says, you just need to find your why. Me too. I hate wasted time, so I'm not gonna waste yours. This is New Game Careers, the no bullshit truth about how decision makers actually decide who to hire and promote. And everything we cover is based on my experience going from entry level to senior leadership. Today we're gonna talk about how to choose the problems at work that actually get you promoted. Then I'm gonna walk through three different types of problems and how much each one increases your value, and we'll also cover how to solve each type. Because if you keep solving the same problems, I can pretty much guarantee you're gonna stay stuck. If you want to level up, you have to stop playing the game you're handed and start playing the game you choose. You can work your ass off for years and still get passed over. It's not because you suck, it's because you're choosing the wrong problems. And since the entire point of this podcast is to help you get promoted and to help you get hired, that's what we're gonna fix today. Now, society doesn't tell you how to choose the right problems, and most of the time, you're gonna hear things like, oh, you just gotta work harder. But like, look, society also gives dog shit advice. And this is one of those times. Because honestly, like effort is subjective, but promotions are not. What actually moves your career forward is solving better problems. So not just more problems, but better problems. And since most people haven't heard better and problems colliding the same sentence, that's what we're gonna unpack today. My name is Bobby. I'm the founder of New Game Careers, and this podcast is about making you more promotable and more hireable. Everything you hear is based on my experience, going from the clueless guy, who asked what Outlook was on his first day, to a three-time director who's now led over a hundred people. And if you want the exact yes or no actions for your next roller promotion, check out NewGameCareers.com. But for now, let's get into it. So to start, let's talk about the opposite of better problems. These are your default problems. And now these are the devil you know. They're comfortable, they're familiar, and they show up on your doorstep invariably, day after day after day. It's kind of like the mildly to moderately dysfunctional relationship you were in that seemed like a great idea at the time. And now that you're out of it, you realize it was a meaningless time vampire, right? Like we've all vented them. But that's what these problems are like. Now, here's the point these problems take from you, but they're masquerading around as something good. They make you feel busy, they might even make you feel important, but they also secretly keep you stuck. Why? Because they don't show that you're better, they just show the same thing over and over and over again. And you know who does that? Basically everyone. And you know who doesn't get promoted? The people that do the same things over and over again. So let's talk about how you actually get out of that trap. And now that's with better problems. Now, yes, these are harder, they're riskier, they're more challenging, but these do three things at once. First, they prove your value right now, today. But also, they give you things on your resume that you get to keep forever, and those always work for you. Once that bullet point is on there, nobody can take that from you. And last, they force you to be better, they make you level up, they get you out of your comfort zone and they force you to get outside of your box, which is the same box that everybody else is living in. So the point is your path up hinges on these types of problems. Now, when most people hear problem, they think something that's annoying or frustrating or they should avoid it. But here's the truth you're 1000% always gonna have problems. The question is, are you solving the ones that actually move you up or solving the ones that keep you stuck? It honestly is probably more simple than you think. Let me give you a stupid simple example. Let's just say you own a pizza shop and you're hiring, and one person comes in and they say, I can make three pizzas in an hour. Next person walks in and says, I can make five. Both helpful, both solving a problem. But then a third person walks in and says, I built a system that lets you make a hundred pizzas in an hour. Now the first two people are gonna be like, Yeah, but I show up and I work really hard and I have a great attitude and like, look, that all might be true. But as the owner, that's not the question that you're answering. You're saying, who gives me the best chance of success? Who is the person that's going to make my business successful above all else? And I'm gonna tell you right now, if you're that person, you're like, hell yeah, I'm gonna pick the person that makes a hundred pizzas in an hour. I really don't care what those other people think about how they work, right? But that's a trap a lot of people fall into. Like, I feel like I'm working so hard and I'm putting in so many hours and getting nothing in return. It's like, hey, look, you might be right in your mind, but here's the harsh reality: the world really doesn't give a shit about how hard you think you work. I'm like, look, don't shoot. Like, I'm just the weather man, I'm trying to hook it up with an umbrella. The real question is, are you doing a little bit more of the same? Or are you solving different problems altogether? And you have to ask yourself that. And here's the part people miss this is not about doing more for the company out of the goodness of your heart. A lot of people get hell bent on the phrase of, Well, I'm not doing anything else until I get paid more. And I'm like, dude, that that is the dumbest phrase of all time because that is going to keep you stuck. If you want to stay exactly where you're at, keep doing the exact same thing. So you have to flip the switch in your head of like, look, this isn't just doing something arbitrarily for the company. Yeah, it's good for them for sure. But this is for you. This is an investment in yourself. And every time you learn how to solve a higher-level problem, you increase your value permanently. And those are the things that get you promoted. And they're also the things that go in your resume and work for you forever. And that's a cheat code that people miss. But the people that solve the same problems over and over, like, look, those are the problems that disappear tomorrow. They don't make you any better, they don't go in your resume. That's a trap. So let's talk about what you can do to avoid that. We're going to talk about three different types of problems that exist at work. And the first type is high frequency low impact problems. Now, this is a little bullshit that pops up every night. It's the repetitive frictions, fires. If they go wrong, like, look, it's inconvenient, but it's usually not something catastrophic, right? Now, these are the things that people complain about constantly. The form breaks, or a report gets messed up, or a customer asks the same question for the 17th time. And like, these things matter, sure, but like here's the thing most people spend their entire careers here. They get faster and faster at reacting to the same bullshit, but they don't become dramatically more valuable. And like, that's the first person in our pizza example. They went from three pizzas an hour to making five. Now, ask yourself, is that the person you're gonna hire? Is that the person you want to level up? Probably not. Now, if you have a great boss, sure, they might want to level you up and they might help you. But here's the point that's the normal path for most people. So the move here is to stop just reacting and start asking why that problem exists in the first place. What's causing it to happen? Right? How do you eliminate it entirely? Because if you can walk into your boss's office and say, hey, there's 25 instances of this in a year, here's how we reduce it or eliminate it. You immediately separate yourself from the person who just keeps dealing with it over and over. And that's the difference between doing your job and improving the business. So here's the practical takeaway: make a list of all the recurring, like little pain in the ass problems happening around you and pick one and start creating a plan on how you fix it. And look, even if that fix is small, that already proves more value than just being the person who handles the same things over and over again. And every time you have spare time, these are the easy things to default to rather than just waiting for the next problem to materialize. And here's something people have to realize your company is optimizing for profits and to keep their doors open. That doesn't make them bad. But here's the truth the people that move up aren't the people that wait for problems to fall in their lap. They're the people that go out and proactively figure the things out that matter to the company that are going to move them forward. Now let's talk about the second type of problems, which are systemic problems. Now, these don't happen as often, but when they do, the effect is more widespread because these are process level. And the upside is look, if you solve one of these, you're not just solving one thing. You might be solving a hundred. So that might be fixing the broken process that affects a hundred orders a day, or that might be the broken handoff that screws over four different departments every other week, right? The point is that when they happen, it affects a lot of people, and that's painful. Let me give you a story from my past that is a perfect example of what I mean here. So we're onboarding a client who is a Fortune 100 customer. They're massive, and this is a huge deal for me. This is like the second big account that I've ever had. And I was completely in charge of this account, kind of my first rodeo doing this in terms of onboarding somebody new. So I get a message three months in from my main stakeholder, who's actually really cool, and she's like, We need to talk right now. And this is during lunch, so I'm like, okay, this can't be good. It must be something important. And so we get on the phone and she's like, Instead of sending one box via FedEx to our customers' houses, you're sending semi trucks. And I was like, Oh shit, like, what happened? Like, people are getting literally stuck in cul-de-sacks because you guys shipped out. I was like, What are you doing? I don't know, I don't know what you shipped out. And what we did was we had a large order drop form, which is something you use when you have like 20 orders or more, and we had about 30 for this. And instead of shipping one unit, we shipped 10 because there was a person who had to enter that into the form. And so instead of shipping a box via FedEx, we're shipping pallets, and so you can imagine it was chaos. And so this was a huge problem for us because every single account within an organization used the same process. So here's what I did instead of just doing the same thing over and over, I said, where was the failure point? And the failure point truly was the fact that there was a human putting all this information in manually. So I'm not gonna go into the details and the nuances, but basically what we did was we recreated a form so that when the customer gave us that form, it automatically got entered into our system. So that eliminated any guessing, any possibility of somebody typing it in wrong into perpetuity. And so instead of just saying, oh shit, we're gonna fix the problem, and then next time, hope for the best, it's okay, if you can figure out how to solve that problem at the cause, at the root, you eliminate it forever. And then you can extrapolate from there, hey, not only can everybody else use this, but here's how many orders we potentially save per year with this process. And so there's real value in that. So not only did that turn a shitty situation into a good situation, it was a massive win because you can do the math on how many orders you're saving per year and changing the process fundamentally. And to go back to our pizza example, this is the second jump. This is the person that doesn't go from three to five. This is the person that goes from five pizzas to a hundred. And this is where you stop just working harder inside the current system and say, okay, I'm going to improve it at its core. And this is where your value gets easier to prove. Because if you can say, hey, this issue cost us 80 grand last year and now it's fixed, or this process used to take 12 hours a week and now it takes three. Now you're talking about value. And a lot of people hear, yeah, just go to work and prove value. And that's something I talk about. And they're like, Well, what the fuck does that mean? Like this. This is exactly what I mean. You can quantify it in dollars or time or orders or widgets or whatever. And your boss can defend that in a room because when they're going to promote you, they're going to have that conversation. And there's going to be a room of people that they have to make their case for. And I'm telling you, this matters so much. And I can tell you from personal experience, it's a hell of a lot easier to argue for promotion when you can say, Hey, I just saved the company a hundred grand. What's 10 of it going in my pocket? Right. That use case, that exact scenario, I absolutely have made that case not only to my boss, but been the person in the negotiating room when arguing for a promotion for people on my team and like use that exact same formula. Hey, look, this is the value they bring. There's no reason why we shouldn't put some of that value in their pocket. And that is a very real thing. So the key here is to look for that one thing where if it goes wrong, it affects a ton of people. And it always starts with being able to identify what are those things in your role. And if you can take some time away from reacting to problems and be proactive and solve it, look, they're not always going to be easy, but sometimes they are. Sometimes it's just a matter of somebody sitting down and thinking critically about what do we do to fix this. And if you can be that person, I'm going to tell you right now, your leverage for promotion is going to increase significantly. And it's going to make that promotion conversation a hell of a lot easier when the time comes. Now, the third type of problems are business critical problems. And these are the ones that keep your leadership team up at night. And maybe it's losing a major client or it's a system failure or it's a regulatory issue or a massive revenue threat. Like these are the Titanic. And so when you solve these, you don't have to convince anyone of your contribution. Like they already know because it's in front of them. And the impact is obvious. And these are the types of problems where, like in pizza shop terms, this isn't going from five pizzas to 100. This is saying I'm going to protect the whole ass business from failing and closing their doors because of the big chain that opened up across the street. Now, are you expected to solve these problems by yourself? No. Most of the time, honestly, you can't. And that's not the point. The point is to identify them and seek them and help move them forward. And here's the thing with these problems they're scary. Yeah, for sure. They're hard. And that's why most people avoid them like the plague. But this is actually a good thing. You know why? Because most of the time people are like, hell no, I'm not trying to deal with that. Right? Like it's human because it's scary. But if you throw your hat in the ring, you are immediately viewed differently. Like, yeah. Did my boss look at me a little bit like a psycho when I constantly went to his office and was like, hey, what's the biggest shit show we have? Like, yeah, of course you did. But I can tell you right now, those are the things that propelled my career forward more than anything else. And I say this to you in the most non-bro way humanly possible. But these are not just problems. These are how you put dollars in your pocket. Seriously. And if your goal is to move up and you can be that person, or you can even just be close to being an orbit of that problem, they're going to start to view you as somebody they can't lose. So now the question becomes how do you identify these types of problems? And here's a few questions you can ask that are at least going to point you in the right direction. So if your boss could eliminate one thing overnight, what would it be? Or if your division leader had a magic lamp, what's that one thing they would wish away? Or what's the one thing that always pisses your customer off and they keep threatening to leave? Or what's that one big ass account that's been a dumpster fire for three months? Those are your clues. And again, you don't have to have the full solution on day one because most people stay away from these problems completely because they feel underqualified. And you know what? We're all underqualified. I'm gonna let you in on a secret. Your leadership team, most of the time, doesn't have all the right answers. They're just really good at solving problems. So if you feel like your boss is this endless well of sage advice, I'm gonna tell you right now, they're not. They're a normal ass person just like you. They're just really good at figuring out how to solve whatever problem pops up that day. And they just solve better problems. That's why they're in the spot that they're in. So don't think that you're underqualified. They don't care what your past is. All they care about is what value do you bring? So here's a practical way to start down that path. So the first thing to do is ask yourself, what are the problems in your orbit that fit this description? And here's the secret. Here's where most people fail. Most people are like, I'm not even gonna try because that's just so far beyond me. But ask yourself this if you could solve this problem, what would it look like? Just ask yourself that question. What would have to happen for that thing to go away? What would have to happen for that problem to no longer be a thing? And start writing. And here's another cheat code that I always use. Assign meaning to it. Instead of saying that's impossible, like what most people do, imagine something crazy would happen if you didn't solve that problem. Imagine that your dog is gonna run away if you don't solve it, or whatever. Insert that. And if that was the case, would you be like, you know what? Spike led a nice life. I hope you make some new pals out there. Or would you be like, uh, fuck that. I'm not letting my dog run away. I'm gonna do what I need to do to figure this out. I most people would probably choose the latter, but they're disconnected and they're like, hey, you know what? I'm not gonna worry about that today because it sounds like a headache. But don't limit yourself to the status quo. Because if you can come up with even a framework or structure of a plan and you go to your boss and you say, Hey, look, I've been thinking a lot about this and I wanted to run this by you, like this is a huge pain in the ass. But here are my thoughts about how we get away from that. They're gonna look at you like, sweet. And even if your plan isn't that great, I'm gonna tell you right now, if you want to be an orbit of the biggest problems, what does that say about you? It's gonna say about you, hey, you're the type of person that they're probably gonna want to give more responsibility to. You're the type of person that they're gonna want to level up. Because at the end of the day, like I said, they're a person just like you, and they are not looking for the next person that can come be a warm body in a chair and do the same thing every day. They want the next person that's like, hey, I'm gonna come solve your problems. And they're gonna be like, sweet. And no matter how chill they are or how like coy the response is, inside they're gonna be like, fuck yeah. And when they view you as a partner, look, your path up is going to be 10 times easier than it was before. Because you know who they're gonna put in a leadership position? It's not the person on autopilot, it's the person that solves better problems. So let's recap. There are three different types of problems: high frequency, low impact problems that make you a little bit better. That's your three pizza person becoming a five pizza person. Then there's systemic problems. These are the problems that improve the process itself and multiply your value. That's your five pizza person going to 100 pizzas. And then there's the business critical problems where you aren't just improving output anymore, you're helping protect or transform the whole business. And that's not I make pizzas faster. That's I help keep the pizza shop alive. And that's the shift. If you want to move up, stop judging yourself by how hard you work and start judging yourself by the level of the problems you're solving because you're always gonna have problems. The only real question is, do you keep solving the ones that keep you stuck? Or are you stepping into the ones that actually improve your value? Because the people that get promoted aren't just working harder, they're solving better problems. So until next week, I'll leave you with this. I think we'd all agree that look, your career is gonna have problems no matter what. That's a guarantee. The question is are you doing the same things every day and choosing the same problems, or are you choosing better problems that are gonna move you up? You always have a choice. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you next week.