In Tim Ferris’ latest podcast episode, he interviews bestselling author and journalist A.J. Jacobs, who’s just published a book about the history of puzzles. I heard A.J. share this offhand idea that a good puzzle can be described in three stages: the question, the journey and the exclamation.

The question: What’s the answer? How do I go about this?

The journey: The struggle and the effort to find a way through.

The exclamation: The breakthrough, overcoming the struggle, the dopamine hit!

It got me thinking. What if, as leaders, we used this framework to describe what our teams and organisations were about? Here’s the question we exist to answer, here’s the struggle and the challenge we face, and here’s what we are hoping for.

Keep the question and the exclamation in mind, and it makes the journey easier.

What if we could frame all of our work in this way?

What would that do?

Worth reflecting on, yeah?