Every day, business leaders roll up their sleeves and jump headfirst into solving problems. From streamlining inefficient processes to tackling supply chain disruptions, we often celebrate this “firefighting” mentality as good leadership.

But here’s the hard truth: many of those problems don’t need to be solved at all. They need to be skipped.

I’ve spent decades helping leaders transition from reactive thinking to Anticipatory leadership. In today’s fast-changing environment, it’s no longer enough to solve problems quickly. You need to start asking a more powerful question: Is this even the right problem to solve? 

More often than not, the answer is no—and that’s where the Skip It Principle comes into play.

The Skip It Principle is a mindset and methodology rooted in anticipation rather than reaction. It helps you sidestep unnecessary risks and get to innovation faster by refusing to waste time on problems that don’t future-proof your organization. This isn’t about avoidance; it’s about intelligent prioritization. It’s about using future certainty to shape your next move – not yesterday’s constraints.

Why solving problems isn’t always strategic

Traditional thinking says if a problem exists, it must be fixed. But that assumes the problem still matters in the context of tomorrow’s marketplace.

Many challenges today are rooted in legacy systems, outdated business models, or dying industries. Pouring energy into solving them is like fixing a fax machine when everyone else has moved to cloud communication.

Anticipatory Leaders approach this differently. They don’t just ask, How can we fix this? They ask, Should we fix this at all? That subtle shift in mindset unlocks massive opportunities while significantly lowering innovation risk.

For instance, consider a company struggling to reduce wait times in physical retail stores. A reactive approach would be to hire more staff or optimize in-store traffic flow. But an Anticipatory approach might ask, Can we skip the store visit entirely and focus on virtual shopping experiences instead?

That’s not a theoretical example. It’s what many businesses did in 2020, and in doing so, they leapfrogged over outdated models into scalable, future-aligned solutions.

How Tesla and Telemedicine skipped their way to the future

Let’s take a look at two standout examples of the Skip It Principle in action.

When Elon Musk set out to build Tesla, traditional automakers were optimizing dealership networks – expanding showrooms, negotiating with franchisors, and navigating territorial disputes. Tesla asked a different question: Do we need dealerships at all? The answer was no. Instead of solving dealership headaches, they skipped the model entirely. By selling directly to consumers online and offering software updates over the air, Tesla avoided channel conflict, slashed operational complexity, and owned the entire customer experience.

Now consider the healthcare industry’s response to a global crisis. When hospitals were overwhelmed and patients feared in-person visits, many providers didn’t try to “fix” the waiting room. They skipped it. They rapidly expanded telemedicine, enabled by tools that already existed: video conferencing, AI diagnostics, and digital health records. They didn’t innovate under pressure – they implemented what the future had already made possible.

These examples have something critical in common: they didn’t just optimize the present – they aligned with future certainties, or what I call Hard Trends.

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What are Hard Trends – and why should you care?

Hard Trends are future certainties that are based on observable, undeniable facts. These include things like exponential growth in computing power, the aging of Baby Boomers, or the increasing digitization of consumer behavior.

When you innovate in alignment with Hard Trends, you’re not gambling. You’re making strategic moves based on what will happen.

Here are a few examples of current Hard Trends you can act on today:

• Continued acceleration of AI and automation across industries
• Rising consumer expectations for personalized digital experiences
• Growing regulatory pressures around data privacy and cybersecurity
• Increasing use of remote and hybrid work models

Rather than solving temporary pain points, these trends help you invest in opportunities that are baked into the future. They allow you to leap over the problems of the present and land on platforms built for tomorrow.

3 ways to apply the Skip It Principle in your business

So how do you start skipping the right things in your organization? Here’s a three-step framework that I recommend to all my clients:

• Identify Future Certainties: Look beyond daily challenges and ask, What’s not going to change? Whether it’s the rising impact of AI or the continued demand for mobile convenience, these Hard Trends are your low-risk areas for innovation.
• Challenge the Status Quo Relentlessly: When you face a problem, don’t just fix it—first ask if it needs fixing. Is this a process, system, or product that still matters in the future you’re heading toward? If not, skip it.
• Pre-Solve Rather Than React: Use what you know about future trends to design solutions before problems become crises. This not only reduces risk—it accelerates execution and builds resilience into your business model.

Ready to skip the guesswork?

Here’s your challenge: pick one problem you’re currently working on—something that’s been eating up time and resources. Now ask yourself: What if we skipped it? What if we did something entirely different, aligned with a Hard Trend?

That single question can change everything. It can spark a new business model, product, or customer experience. It can take you from firefighting to future-shaping.

We can’t eliminate every risk. But we can eliminate the unnecessary ones. That’s what smart innovation is all about. Stop solving yesterday’s problems. Start creating tomorrow’s solutions.

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