How Can We Build Enough Power to Solve This Problem?

This is Johanna Rothman’s October 2026 Create an Adaptable Life newsletter. The unsubscribe link is at the bottom.

There are plenty of problems I wish I could just solve. Some are professional. I can’t solve them alone unless a client hires me to collaborate with them. Even then, sometimes the client says, “You have to stop at this boundary. You can’t go further to solve our problems.” That’s okay because the client and I, together, can still build enough power to achieve at least some of the desired outcomes.

Other problems are community problems, such as the pothole in front of my house. Since I live on a private way, the town will happily send the “mad plower” to plow the snow in the winter. I do appreciate the snow plowing. However, the town does not then fix the pothole the mad plower makes. I find that a bit irritating. Yet, our neighborhood has banded together to help each other fix these potholes the town does not. While we have lost the power struggle with the town, my neighbors are willing to share their power with us.

Then, there are personal problems. I collaborate with a physical therapist, so we can adapt normal exercises to my abilities. I proceed with my exercises. As a writer and independent publisher, I collaborate with others to solve our various business problems. Finally, my cancer requires two kinds of problem-solving and collaborative teams: oncology and surgical teams.

That collaboration allows us to build power and solve problems.

While organizations can bestow title-based power on designated leaders, that title-based power is often not enough. Every tough problem I’ve ever had to solve required collaboration with others. That’s a superpower too few of us realize we need.

Collaboration is a Superpower for Our Problem Solving

I only know how to collaborate by practicing.

Some collaborations require me to pull my hands off the keyboard, such as when I write books with coauthors. I tend to be a bit driven and aggressive about getting the words down, always writing forward. (You are not surprised.) That’s because I’m not afraid to write the wrong words, or need to edit typos later. Not all writers feel comfortable with that. If I want to collaborate with them, I need to adjust and adapt my tendencies to their needs.

Why? Because I have more experience, I have more personal “power-over” in the relationship. If I use that power-over stance, I prevent myself from learning in at least two dimensions: how to collaborate with the other person, and what I can learn from them. In my experience, those two learnings are related.

The more I use “power-with,” the more collaboration I can practice. And the more I can learn from the other person. I have no guarantees of learning—I only have the possibility. But that possibility makes me more likely to practice my collaboration.

That’s why collaboration is a superpower. Especially for problem-solving.

Problems Occur All the Time

We can see some problems coming a mile away, such as the mad plower making holes in our street.

But the client problems and drawing boundaries? I was surprised the first time a client said, “No, you can’t go past that boundary.” I turned that surprise into collaboration. That allowed us to examine what we could do together and adapt my initial thoughts to something that would work for both of us.

And collaboration on business problems? I love that, because other people have ideas I had not yet considered.

If you want to solve problems the “best” possible way, consider how you can collaborate with others. That’s how we can build enough power to solve this problem.

Collaboration is a Superpower for Our Problem Solving

Problems Occur All the Time

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