Rabbi Elan Babchuck
Some of the greatest wisdom is easy to process at the level of intellectually understanding, but much harder to embrace and enact consistently.
Love the Problem – Not Your Solution
Unpacking the Big Idea
I was reintroduced to this big idea by Rabbi Elan Babchuck, Director of Innovation at CLAL and Founding Director of the Glean Incubator, when he facilitated a session titled “Love the Problem – Not Your Solution” at a gathering of the Adese Fellows in Louisville, Kentucky in June 2018.
Addressing a group of spiritual entrepreneurs and social enterprise leaders, Babchuck reminded us how easy it is to fall in love with a solution. This is especially true as one invests more and more time and resources into a given solution. At some point the solution transitions from a solution to your solution to the problem. At that point, it becomes easy to focus on one’s own solution instead of the problem.
It is important to remember that the solution will never be permanent, but the problem always is.
So What?
I’ve spent the last year as Director of Social Enterprise for the Mansfield Mission Center. We are all about the issue of economic self-sufficiency for individuals and families. Toward that end we have deployed many solutions, and are always looking for additional solutions to help people move from struggling to stability and then from stability to thriving in ways that are sustainable.
- What is one problem in your community? What solutions are you working to enact? What about your faith community?
- Share a tip for helping those who are seeking to build better communities never lose sight of the problem by focusing on their specific solutions.