When You Have a Hammer...

What Happens When We Mistake Solutions for Strategy

Photo by iMattSmart on Unsplash

My new book, The Solution Trap: Why Colleges Keep Making the Same Mistakes, comes out in March 2026. It's about why college leaders keep rushing to solutions without first understanding what problems we’re trying to solve.

You can pre-order it here, but first, let me tell you about the psychological trap that became the foundation for everything else I discovered.

Another Day, Another Crisis

It's been a hard week, and it's only Monday. You're a senior academic administrator at a large public university, and an email lands in your inbox at 8:47 PM, marked "URGENT" in red letters.

"We need to talk about the situation immediately," it reads. "Emergency meeting tomorrow at 8 AM."

It's a weird mix of people. You glance around the room wondering what kind of crisis could possibly demand this combination of expertise.

Then you find out.

Late yesterday afternoon, a student's tearful TikTok video about failing a math class went viral, and it's become a PR nightmare. #Mathfail started trending immediately. And now, at 8:01 AM Tuesday morning, you can see minute-by-minute that students from around the country are posting their own videos about similar struggles. Parents are calling to complain about academic support. Cable news picked up the story. Board members are asking pointed questions.

Then comes the faithful question. "What should we do?"

• "We need to act fast," someone says, breaking the silence.

• And then, the room explodes with energy. Laptops open. Solutions start flying like confetti.

• "What about a new math tutoring platform?"

• "I saw a webinar about AI-powered academic support for this exact problem."

• "Another college just implemented an early warning system. Maybe we should explore that too."

• "We could fast-track a partnership with that consulting firm. They might know what to do."

  
  

But here's what's really happening. It’s not strategy. Rather, it’s that everyone is so focused on moving fast that nobody pauses to ask what problem they’re actually trying to solve. The energy feels productive, but you're generating solutions to a problem you haven't clearly defined.

This isn't a character flaw or a sign of weak leadership. It's a completely predictable response to pressure. And it's what happens when we get trapped by our own expertise.

When Everything Becomes a Nail

There's an old saying: "When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

Psychologists call it Maslow's Hammer, and it’s a cognitive bias I discuss in my book that shapes how we see problems once we become attached to a particular solution. The moment you get excited about something—a new approach, a new technology, a new strategy—something shifts in your brain. You start seeing that solution everywhere. It becomes your hammer.

Think about the last time you discovered a new solution that seemed promising. Maybe it was a data dashboard that could track student engagement. Or a communication platform that promised to improve collaboration across your team. Project management software that would finally organize all those initiatives. An AI tool that could automate routine tasks. A student success platform that predicted who was at risk. New CRM software for admissions. A learning management system upgrade. Online proctoring technology. Campus safety apps. Budget forecasting tools.

Suddenly, everything around you started looking like a problem that tool could solve. Student retention issues? A dashboard could track that. Faculty complaints about meetings? A new communication platform could fix that. Budget concerns? Better data could optimize that.

You weren't wrong to see potential. These might all be legitimate solutions. But here's what just happened. You took the bait! You mistook the presence of a solution for strategy, and rushed ahead without first defining the problem you're trying to solve.

And that changes everything. Now you're holding a hammer, and you stop asking whether the problem in front of you actually requires a hammer at all. Maybe it needs a screwdriver? Maybe just a 5 minute conversation? Maybe it doesn't need anything from you at all.

The Dangerous Part

Back in that conference room, watch what happens when everyone brings their favorite hammer.

• PR person sees a communication problem.

• IT sees a technology gap.

• Academic affairs leader sees a student support issue.

• Math faculty see an academic standards problem

• The crisis consultant sees a process failure.

All smart, experienced leaders. And all probably right about something. But when everyone is wielding their preferred solution, the room fills with hammers looking for nails. Solutions looking for problmes to solve.

But the most dangerous part isn't that any of these solutions are wrong. New tutoring platforms can help struggling students. Better communication can prevent crises. Early warning systems can identify problems before they explode.

It’s that when you're so convinced you've found the right hammer that you can't step back and ask: What if this isn't a nail?

Here's what this looks like in practice:

That’s not to suggest that quick action is always wrong. Sometimes you do need to move fast. But most of the time, what feels like decisive leadership is actually just hammer-swinging in search of nails.

So instead, take a step back and ask: "What problem are we actually trying to solve?"

That one question is almost always guaranteed to stop the room cold

Why We Love Our Hammers

Here's what I've learned after watching dozens of these emergency meetings: We don't rush to solutions because we're lazy or careless. We rush because our brains are designed to look for patterns and shortcuts.

When you're facing pressure and uncertainty, your brain asks a simple question: "What have I seen work before?" It reaches for the most available examples, the most recent successes, the tools that felt good to use.

Think about what actually happened in that Tuesday crisis meeting. Twelve intelligent, experienced leaders spent two hours generating solutions based on what they'd seen work somewhere else, for someone else, under different circumstances.

Was their crisis really about the viral video itself? The student's math struggles? The professor's teaching methods? The academic support systems? The media coverage? Public perception of academic rigor?

Each of these problems requires completely different approaches. Public relations fixes perception problems but won't solve underlying student learning issues. New tutoring technology might help some students but won't address systemic teaching problems. Policy changes might improve institutional responses but won't fix individual classroom dynamics.

When you're swinging your favorite hammer, you end up treating symptoms while the real issue continues to fester.

Put Your Hammer Down

I've seen leaders learn to recognize when they're holding hammers and consciously put them down long enough to examine the problem clearly.

The most successful crisis response I witnessed happened at a college facing a situation remarkably similar to that Tuesday morning meeting.

Instead of rushing to solutions, the president did something that surprised everyone: She put down her hammer.

"Before we talk about what to implement," she said, "let's spend some time understanding what we're really dealing with."

They then spent two weeks conducting what she called "listening sessions" with students, faculty, and staff who had direct knowledge of the academic challenges students were facing. They analyzed not just the immediate crisis, but patterns they'd been missing in student performance and support systems.

And what they discovered surprised everyone. Their crisis wasn't really about the specific math class that went viral. It was about a systematic gap between how they thought they were supporting struggling students and what students actually needed.

They were treating the symptom while ignoring the disease.

The solution wasn't a new tutoring platform or academic early warning system. It was redesigning their approach to developmental education through small, targeted interventions based on what students told them actually worked, something that couldn't be purchased or announced, only developed over time.

Six months later, not only had the immediate crisis been resolved, but several underlying issues had improved dramatically. More importantly, they'd built systems that made future crises much less likely.

The president's reflection? "If we'd just grabbed our usual tools, we would have spent months and thousands of dollars treating the wrong problem."

Try This Next Time

The next time you find yourself in one of those urgent conference rooms, and there will be a next time, try this simple intervention.

Before anyone mentions their favorite solution, ask these three questions:

• What problem are we actually trying to solve? (Not what problem are we assuming we're solving)

• What evidence do we have that this is the real problem? (Not what evidence supports our preferred solution)

• How will we know if we've solved it? (Not how will we know if we've implemented something)

This takes maybe thirty minutes. Sometimes an hour. It feels slow when you're in crisis mode.

But putting down your hammer long enough to examine what you're actually trying to fix will save you months of expensive motion that doesn't solve anything.

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The Solution Trap explores this pattern and many others like it. Pre-order the book here.