If you as a Product Lead want to escape the feature factory trap, it's absolutely essential to create space for meaningful product thinking in your product teams. Without clear product thinking abilities and problem solving skills, it's almost impossible for product teams to build the right product. This article explores how you can support your team in developing a problem solving mindset as a core foundation for that.

The first enemy to tackle: Solution thinking

In product teams, we often talk about solutions, but rarely about the problems we're actually trying to solve. As soon as a new topic comes up, the ideas start flowing:

"I have a solution for that…" or "Here’s the best way to solve it!"

It feels productive. Like we're making real progress.

But are we?

Usually not. Because if we go too quickly into solution mode, we often miss the real problem or build the wrong thing entirely.

Solutions are easy: Understanding problems is hard

Truly understanding a problem takes more than a good idea. It takes questions, critical thinking and the mandate to explore the problem space:

– Who is this a problem for?

– What happens when it shows up?

– What happens if we don’t solve it?

– What do we think we know (and what do we actually know)?

These questions lead us deeper and pull us out of default solution thinking. And that's exactly where good product work begins: with understanding where the real problems and the real opportunities lie.

But why is it so hard (even for experienced teams) to stay in the problem space?

The answer is quite simple: Our brains are wired to reduce uncertainty. And jumping to a solution feels faster, safer, more concrete. Unless we actively act against this reflex, we'll always jump into the solution mode.

Three cognitive patterns reinforce this behavior. And if you understand the patterns, you can also think about how to break them.

1. Additive Bias: Solving tough problems through adding more features

When something doesn't work, we tend to add: more features, more processes, more meetings. Taking things away feels harder and our brains often don’t even consider this as an option.

The result of the additive bias? More activity, less clarity. The only way to break this reflex is to notice it and then deliberately train reduction skills within your product team. Tools like Reverse Brainstorming can help teams practice letting go instead of adding more. This is a first important step to avoid adding questionable features to your product backlog, when the direction isn't even clear.

2. Low Epistemic Motivation: Staying in your comfort zone

Sometimes the problem in your product team isn’t the lack of knowledge – it’s the lack of curiosity and so-called epistemic motivation. Instead of digging deeper, we confirm what we already believe. This happens not out of ignorance, but because it’s more comfortable. Many people prefer to stay in their comfort zone. It feels easier and saves energy.

But the comfort zone blocks us from engaging with complexity. The good news is: this motivation can be nurtured. Often, it’s enough to set up a structure that clearly separates problem and solution spaces and gives teams the time and focus to stay with the problem. It’s one of many reasons why strong product discovery practices are so important. Nowhere else in daily product work do we have such a clear distinction between problem and solution space.

3. Status Quo Bias: Certainty through the familiar

The third and very common cognitive pattern is the Status Quo bias. It's quite simple to explain: We tend to stick with what we know or what worked well in the past, even when better options exist. In product teams, this shows up when we reuse old patterns or avoid questioning decisions because “that worked last time.” This cognitive pattern is very efficient at reducing uncertainty, but dangerous when your goal as a product team is to continuously rethink and improve how things are done.

Innovation and change aren’t blocked by resistance. They’re blocked by habit, which then leads to resistance. That’s why we need deliberate spaces where new perspectives and deep problem understanding aren’t just allowed, but expected. The Status Quo bias is often so prevalent in companies that you need to embed systematic ways of acting against it deep in your work routines.

Opportunity Solution Tree: A structure for systematic thinking

One framework that really helps against the Status Quo bias and the Additive bias - and acts like a bit of a magic wand (if done right!) - is the Opportunity Solution Tree by Teresa Torres. It helps teams avoid jumping into familiar solutions and instead work systematically in the problem space before moving to execution.

The Opportunity Solution Tree maps the path from a clear outcome to the most relevant user problems (opportunities), to ideas (solutions), and then to tested assumptions.

Teams focus on one specific opportunity, generate several solutions for it and test not just the ideas, but the assumptions behind them. This doesn’t just encourage deeper thinking, it helps teams to continuously question what they believe in and to explore and validate the problem space itself.

The Role of the Product Lead: Encouragement, not answers

As a Product Lead, it’s not your job to have all the answers or the best ideas. It’s your job to encourage your team to think critically, ask uncomfortable questions and step out of the comfort zone. 

That requires Psychological Safety. People can only speak up, challenge and think differently when they feel safe. Without that, teams stay at the surface and in the collective comfort zone. As a Product Lead, you play a key role in building up this Psychological Safety. This is a precondition for everything else to work and a key ingredient of high performing teams.

Problem solving in product isn’t about being clever. It’s about being curious and courageous enough to stay with the problem long enough to understand it. As a Product Lead, your greatest impact doesn’t come from knowing the answers, but from shaping a space where the right questions can be asked. When teams feel safe to explore, challenge, and learn, they move from shipping features to solving real problems. 

And that’s where meaningful product work begins and how you can get out of the Feature Factory mode.