Here’s what you have to know—and not just understand intellectually, but feel as true: every problem exists in someone’s mind. Problems don’t live in the external world as fixed objects. They arise through how a person interprets and evaluates what’s happening.
Gerald Nadler and Shozo Hibino put it clearly in Breakthrough Thinking (1990):
“Problems are reflections of states of mind… A problem is a condition or set of circumstances that a person thinks should be changed.”
Notice what’s happening here. There are two parts:
- Circumstances — the situation “out there” in the world
- Meaning and judgment — what a person thinks should be different
The external circumstances may be real, measurable, and visible. But the problem appears when we want those circumstances to change. That “wanting” creates a gap between:
- the present state, and
- the desired state
And where is that gap? In our thinking. The gap lives in the mind.
Why This Perspective Matters
When you truly take this on—emotionally and somatically (at the level of felt experience)—you develop a deep intuition: problems always and only occur in human meaning-making.
And this is the saving grace: it stops you from solving the wrong thing.
Because one of the biggest obstacles to effective problem-solving is exactly this: working on the wrong problem. How often have you done that? I know I have—more than I like to admit. I’ve been amazingly good at solving symptoms (mine and other people’s). Those solutions felt productive, but many were only band-aids—temporary fixes that didn’t touch the real issue.
The Real Work: Perform a Meta Probe
To find the real problem, we need a meta probe.
That means we take the person inward—to their Meta Place—the internal “location” where their meanings, interpretations, and assumptions are constructed. That’s where the problem lives, and therefore that’s where the real solution must be discovered.
This is the heart of the 5-Minute Conversation and the essence of the 5-Minute Manager: cut through the noise and locate the meaning structures that generated the problem in the first place.
So keep your eye on the ball:
- not the drama,
- not the story surface,
- not the symptoms, but the meaning constructs that give birth to the problem.
Entering Someone’s Inner Landscape
Think of it as stepping through a portal into the person’s mental world.
Inside that world you’ll find:
- semantic associations (what they link together, and how)
- internal representations (the “movie” they play in their mind)
- a house of language (how words form concepts, beliefs, and rules)
- assumptive frames about self, others, the world, knowledge, and even reality
All of this is part of the Meta Place.
When you understand the Meta Place—and the key landmarks of the mind (the thinking processes that shape what feels real)—you can guide someone to discover:
- the real problem, and
- a legitimate solution often at the same time.
Practical Meta Probes You Can Use
Here are several ways to guide a person inward and reveal the thinking that creates the problem:
1) The Thought Experiment (Problem Formation Probe)
Invite the person into a guided imagining:
- “Imagine yourself in the situation where the problem usually occurs—but this time the problem hasn’t happened yet. You’re there. What’s going on?”
- “Now, for the problem to arise… what would have to happen?”
This helps identify how the problem gets constructed in real time.
2) The Self-Talk Probe (Internal Dialogue Contrast)
Then go experiential:
- “How do you talk to yourself when the problem is not there?”
- “How do you talk to yourself when you notice the problem is there?”
This reveals shifts in internal language—often the switch that creates the problem-state.
3) The Sentence-Stem Probe (Belief and Identity Frames)
Use a sentence stem and invite multiple endings (10 is a good number):
- “If I truly and deeply knew that my value was unconditional, and nothing could threaten it or take it away, then…”
This surfaces hidden rules, permissions, fears, and identity-level assumptions.
4) The Metaphor Probe (Meaning Made Visible)
When a metaphor appears, don’t skip it—work with it fully:
- “I feel really stuck in this problem…”
Then explore:
- “How stuck is stuck?”
- “What exactly are you stuck in?”
- “How deep is that stuckness?”
- “What resource would you need to get out of it?”
Metaphors often point directly to structure—because they are structure.
Curated by Danielle Tan.
Reference:
- [Neurons] 2026 Neurons #6 THE META PROBE FOR PROBLEM-SOLVING by L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. Executive Director, ISNS.
