Premature Convergence via Subject Matter Expertise

It was a common problem in consulting that people already started projects with solutions in mind. This was especially problematic because it narrowed the focus during problem exploration and led to biases and overlooked, potentially more pressing issues. And while people have become more accepting of pushback, more willing to acknowledge that we need to diverge before we converge, a similar phenomenon can happen simply because of who's in the room at project kickoff.

Having deep subject matter expertise present early is genuinely valuable in order to understand the current state and establish a project’s constraints. But relying too heavily on those same experts can narrow the focus prematurely, even during the problem definition phase. That's where the old adage feels all too true: if you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

The best project plan or workshop agenda won't save you if participants get too caught up in the narrowness of their own expertise. That might be a solutions architect who's deeply familiar with a certain architecture and keeps trying to fit the current problem into their preferred solution. Or a consultant who reaches for a previously successful case study because it feels familiar. In those situations, I've found it essential to balance deep subject matter expertise with skilled facilitation, especially in those early stages. When I was put in those positions, I tried to approach discussions from a research mindset: open-ended questions, balancing louder and quieter voices, probing where necessary.

The basic premise is simple, albeit not always easy to follow. Don't converge too early just because a premature idea has already taken root in someone's head. One approach that helped me was treating everything as a hypothesis. A premature idea? That's a solution hypothesis. So how does it connect to our hypotheses about capabilities? How do those connect to hypotheses about user pain points? And do we actually have data to build confidently on those foundational assumptions, or are they just that: hypotheses?

The order of divergence and convergence matters. Just as you need to understand user and business needs thoroughly before narrowing your focus, choosing a solution too early almost always leads to retroactively reshaping the problem definition to fit a preconceived idea. And all too often, that's a direct path to poor product-market fit.