THE EFFECTIVE PROBLEMSOLVER #105
There’s one practice that can dramatically improve your effectiveness in the social sector.
It’s not adopting the latest “best practice.”
It’s not following a shiny new framework or toolkit.
It’s not downloading another 40-page PDF of lessons learned.
It’s something much simpler—and almost no one does it.
Deliberate practice.
I’ll explain what I mean in a moment. But first, a story.
Why a Triathlon?
Last year, I signed up for a triathlon.
Now, I wasn’t trying to prove I could survive the distance. I’m already fit, and endurance events aren’t new to me. The real challenge was that this was something I hadn’t done before—swimming, biking, and running as a combined event.
And more than that, it was a chance to see if I could actually get better at each of those skills, not just muddle through.
Swimming meant learning how to move efficiently through open water instead of just splashing through pool laps. Biking meant figuring out how to pace myself on the road so I didn’t burn out halfway through. Running meant unlearning bad habits—an inefficient gait, the tendency to push too hard and get injured.
If I had just “trained” by piling on more miles, I wouldn’t have improved much. I had to break things down, focus on weak spots, and deliberately work on them. That’s when I started to see progress.
I wasn’t just exercising anymore. I was practicing—deliberately.
The Power of Deliberate Practice
Psychologist Anders Ericsson coined the term after studying how top performers—musicians, athletes, chess masters—reach elite levels. His finding? It wasn’t natural talent that explained excellence. It was how they practiced.
Deliberate practice has a few distinct qualities:
- It targets specific skills just outside your comfort zone.
- It requires focused effort—not autopilot repetition.
- It uses feedback and adjustment—whether from a coach, a peer, or honest self-assessment.
- It’s designed to improve performance over time, not just get through tasks.
That’s why world-class violinists don’t just play through entire songs. They isolate difficult passages and repeat them slowly until the mistakes are corrected. Olympic swimmers break down their stroke mechanics frame by frame. Chess masters don’t just play—they analyze their losses to understand what went wrong.
It’s not glamorous. It’s mentally and emotionally demanding. But it works.
What This Means for the Social Sector
Here’s the connection: solving complex social problems—poverty, homelessness, crime—is not just about doing more work. It’s about doing better work.
And almost no one in our field treats it that way.
We go from grant to grant, initiative to initiative, often without pausing to ask whether our strategies are actually improving. We sit through webinars, skim reports, and check boxes on deliverables. That’s the equivalent of jogging on a treadmill and wondering why you’re not ready for a triathlon.
The problems we face require more than activity. They require practice.
Here’s what deliberate practice could look like in the social sector:
- Assess performance differently. Instead of just asking, “Did we meet our deliverables?” ask: “Did our strategy create the kind of change we hoped for? What did we misread or overlook?”
- Get feedback from outside your bubble. Find someone—a peer, a coach, or even a skeptical ally—who can review your work and challenge your assumptions.
- Rehearse before it counts. Role-play a tough coalition meeting. Practice your pitch to a policymaker. Run through the questions stakeholders are likely to raise. Build muscle memory before the real thing.
A Self-Diagnostic
When I was training for the triathlon, the real challenge wasn’t finishing the race—it was figuring out how to get better at the parts that didn’t come naturally.
It’s the same with problem-solving. Most of us are “fit enough”—we’ve got knowledge, experience, and good intentions. But we don’t deliberately improve.
Here’s a quick way to test yourself:
Think about the past month of your work. Can you answer yes to at least two of these questions?
- Skill focus: Can you name one specific skill you were actively trying to improve?
- Feedback loop: Did you get candid input from someone you trust outside your immediate circle?
- Rehearsal: Did you practice for a high-stakes moment instead of just showing up?
If not, you’re exercising—you’re not practicing. And like me before the triathlon, you’ll plateau.
Three Ways to Start This Week
If you want to move from busy work to deliberate practice:
- Pick one skill. Make it specific: “map system dynamics more clearly,” not “collaborate better.”
- Set up a feedback loop. Ask someone to review your work—or record yourself and reflect.
- Rehearse. Before your next high-stakes meeting or facilitation, practice with a colleague.
Deliberate practice is invisible. It won’t look like progress to anyone else. But over time, it compounds. It’s the difference between maintaining your current pace and leveling up.
And in our work—where the problems are complex, the stakes are high, and the status quo isn’t good enough—that difference matters.
See you in two weeks.
