I recently came across an article in The Economist about Dutch entrepreneur Salar al Khafaji. He’s known for co-founding a data visualisation startup that was eventually acquired by Palantir, and is now working on Monumental – a company aiming to boost productivity in the construction industry through robotics and automation. What struck me most wasn’t just his latest venture, but his approach to identifying meaningful problems to solve. The article referred to this as The Hamming Question.
The Hamming Question is named after Richard Hamming, a legendary mathematician at Bell Labs. Hamming was known for challenging his colleagues with a set of deceptively simple, yet profoundly important questions:
- What are the most important problems in your field?
- Are you working on one of them?
- If not, why not?
The simplicity of this framework is alluring – but it cuts straight to the heart of what matters. Hamming’s point was this: if you’re not spending your time on the most important problems, then what are you really doing?
Founders and the Hamming Mindset
Many of the world’s most successful founders – consciously or not – spend their time obsessing over some version of the Hamming question. At their core, they are problem solvers, relentlessly focused on identifying high-impact challenges and dedicating themselves to fixing them.
Take Elon Musk. Whether you agree with him or not on wider issues, his rationale for founding Tesla was based on a clear-eyed belief that the future of transportation had to move away from fossil fuels. He saw the problem – global dependence on combustion engines – and built a company to tackle it head-on.
Or consider Sam Walton, founder of Walmart, who famously said:
“There is only one boss – the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company, from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.”
Walton’s obsession with delivering value to the customer wasn’t just good business; it was his way of constantly answering the Hamming question: What does the customer need most? And how can we deliver it better than anyone else?
In a previous role, I worked with a real estate entrepreneur in Harare who embodied this philosophy. He recognized a glaring issue in the local market: under-served residential communities had no access to modern shopping centres. Retailers, in turn, couldn’t reach these potential customers. So he set out to build low-cost shopping centres in these areas – a win-win solution that created retail hubs where none existed before.
His vision was driven by a clear, pressing need in the market. That’s exactly the kind of thinking the Hamming question demands.
The Hamming Question for Employees
It’s not just founders and executives who should be asking the Hamming question – employees should too. If you’re in a team or corporate environment, the version of the question becomes:
- What are the biggest problems facing your team, department, or company?
- Are you spending your time solving those problems?
- Are you helping your manager or leadership solve their most important challenges?
High-performing employees distinguish themselves not just by doing what’s asked, but by deeply understanding why it’s being asked. The most valuable team members are those who align their work with the biggest priorities of the business and proactively address the roadblocks their managers are dealing with.
In practical terms, this means zooming out and asking:
- What metrics is my manager under pressure to hit?
- What’s keeping them up at night?
- What would make their life easier, their decisions faster, or their team more effective?
When employees begin thinking this way, their impact scales. They shift from simply executing tasks to being trusted problem solvers, and ultimately future leaders.
Escaping the Corporate Trap
Unfortunately, many professionals – even talented ones – get stuck in a cycle of surface-level productivity. Meetings, inboxes, documentation, and dashboards fill the day. But the deeper question remains: Is this moving the needle?
That’s the danger of not pausing to ask the Hamming question. It’s not that people are lazy or uninterested – they’re often just consumed by the urgent rather than the important.
The discipline to focus on meaningful problems – whether as a founder or an employee – is what sets apart the average from the exceptional.
A Call to Action
Whether you’re building a startup, leading a team, or navigating your career, the Hamming question is a compass that points toward meaningful work.
Ask yourself regularly:
- What are the most important problems in my world?
- Am I spending my energy on solving them?
- If not, what needs to change?
And if you’re part of a team, go one step further:
- What’s the most important problem my manager is trying to solve?
- How can I help solve it?