Society And The Sociology Of Adult Education

Solving the Problem Solving Problem

admin — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 11:39:02 +0000

The meeting started like a hundred others before. There were five people sitting around the conference table, like they always did, trying to solve a problem that had popped up in the last few weeks. If you could watch and listen from another room you wouldn’t find major arguments or conflicts. These people had worked together before and from all outward appearances were pretty effective as a team.

After nearly an hour though, they seemed at a stalemate. People had begun to describe possible solutions to the problem and an agreement was no where to be found. The longer they talked, the more disagreement there seemed to be. Finally Susan, the newest member of the group, asked a naïve question, “Are we all trying to solve the same problem here?”

They scoffed, both mentally and through their body language – and Tom, the old veteran of the team, spoke for everyone else when he said, “Of course we are solving the same problem. Where have you been for the last hour?” Since the meeting time was over, and people had other meetings to attend, they hastily scheduled a continuation for later in the afternoon.

Drew, the team leader, couldn’t get Susan’s question out of his mind though, and so after his next meeting he stopped by her desk. Since she wasn’t there, he went to his desk and dropped a quick email to learn why she asked that question.

When Susan got the email she wrote back saying that a mentor had taught her something about problem solving several years before and that as she watched the meeting progress the words she had learned kept coming up in her mind. Then she typed the phrases that she kept thinking about, phrases that had been burned into her mind by her mentor:

“Many problems go unsolved by groups because people aren’t working on the same problem.”

“A problem well stated is a problem half solved.”

“What problem are you really trying to solve?”

She then explained she had been taught to always start problem solving by writing a problem statement and she through that experience had learned problems were typically solved much quicker. She closed by typing, “If we had started by writing a problem statement this morning, we would likely not need to meet again this afternoon.” As she re-read the note before clicking “send” she erased the last sentence.

As people arrived for the second meeting Drew was already there. On the flipchart he had written in red marker – “What is the problem we are trying to solve?”

He re-started the meeting by asking everyone to write down their answer to the question. People groaned and shot quizzical looks his way, but everyone wrote. They started quickly, but if you were to ask them later, it took them longer to write this statement than they had expected.

Once everyone was looking up again, Drew asked them to read their statements. After each person had done so the room got really quiet. Tom broke the silence by saying what they were all thinking – that Susan had nailed the issue with her question in the morning – they weren’t all working on the same problem.

Action Steps

This scenario – at least the first half of it – takes place in organizations every day. Too frequently, people want to rush to a solution and in doing so waste time, resources and the equity in their relationships by battling over solutions to different problems.

Of course people are working on very similar problems. For example, let’s say the meeting was called to discuss the cost overruns on the new project. Everyone wants to solve it, and so they come to the meeting with their own biases and slant on the situation, which leads them, without a clear statement of the problem, to search for solutions from their own perspective.

Intelligent, capable and motivated people then become stalemated because they didn’t all start with the same question.

You can avoid this in your next problem solving meeting (and everyone there after for the rest of your life), by starting at the true beginning. Resolve to start your next problem solving question by asking, “What is the problem we are trying to solve?”

Get everyone’s input, and come to agreement on this first. This initial discussion, especially the first few times people do it, will expose many symptoms and even some possible solutions. Write them down, but don’t let those ideas distract the conversation until a clear statement has been formed, agreed to, and written down.

Once you have it written down, it becomes your north star, your guidance system, as you search for and find solutions to the real problem.

The Rest of the Meeting

After the surprise beginning, the afternoon meeting went very well. There were some challenges in hammering out the problem statement, but people were amazed at how fast they came to agreement on the best next steps once that was done. Everyone, that is, except Susan.

The next time Susan walked into the conference room, she smiled as she saw, scrawled on the white board, “A problem well stated is a problem half solved.” The statement had been circled, and in writing she thought was Tom’s, someone had written “Don’t Erase.”

Innovative Problem Solving Teams – Are You Getting the Results From Your Teams That You Need?

admin — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 11:36:02 +0000

Why should leaders and professionals pay attention to problem-solving and innovation? Because problem-solving is the essence of innovation. The world is moving at the speed of change. As such, businesses today face three realities:

” First, all advantage is temporary.
” Second, companies tend to decay over time unless they bring in new people and new ideas.
” Third, companies and markets are convergent – that is, products and services become more and more uniform, and differences between them tend to dissipate.

In order to deal with these problems, companies absolutely must innovate. Innovation means problem-solving. And, chances are, your business faces multiple problems when it comes to dealing with issues of innovation and change.

So, what can leaders and professionals do to face these issues?

Here are 6 things you can do to get better results from your problem-solving teams that lead to innovation.

1. Know your problem-solving style and appreciate the value of diversity of styles
2. Know and share your strategies
3. Empower people
4. Train people on creativity techniques
5. Help people understand how change happens
6. Create a database of problem-solving styles

Let’s look at each of these in turn:

1. Help team members better understand their and their teammate’s strategy for innovative problem-solving. We believe one of the main things is to better understand how people think about problem-solving. All people have a particular style of thinking. What psychologists call cognitive style. We like to just call it thinking style. People have a certain preference for style of problem-solving and we believe it’s better to help people understand and appreciate the diversity of styles. There is a definite advantage to having people with diverse thinking styles on problem-solving teams. Managing diversity is the foundation for managing innovative problem-solving.

2. Know and share your strategies. Help people understand what your long-range goals and strategies are. Whether your company has an innovation strategy, a competitive strategy, or a quality strategy, they need to know what it is. Help them get a good understanding of what innovation and innovative problem-solving means for you and your company and how it relates to your overall business goals and strategies.

3. Empower people. Train people on your problem solving process. Make sure you have a good process. If you don’t have one, borrow one or develop one. Test to see that people have the time to work on problem-solving teams and work on innovative projects.

4. Train people on creativity techniques. All people are creative. Just follow them around and see what they do in their spare time or in their hobbies. But they can better exercise that creative ability when you create an environment where they can be creative and are given them the tools and training in good creativity techniques.

5. Help people understand and be able to deal with change resulting from solving the problem. Innovation and problem-solving create change. But change has two faces: first of all, change itself is an event, a situation. But it’s organizational. The other side of change is human – it’s what some call Transition. Transition is the adjustment that people have to make in themselves in response to the situation that is changing.

6. And last, but most importantly, create a database of problem-solving styles. This will make it easier to bring the right people together with the right talents to solve the right problems. There are many organizations who have applied these concepts. For example, DuPont, Procter & Gamble, the United States Army War College, and the Air Force Technical Applications Center have all used these methods to improve problem-solving and, thus, improve their overall effectiveness.

Here’s a summary of what you’ll get out of this: enhanced quality improvement efforts, teams will become more innovative problem solvers, more diversity of thought within teams, more and better generation of ideas, and greater cooperation among team members. They will also be more effective in dealing with change, and you’ll get a greater return on people capital.