Problem Solving - The Ultimate Team Game

This short piece is the first of 10 small articles discussing the successful ways in which the best organisations around the world deal with major problems that impact on their ability to operate safely, profitably, sustainably and responsibly. 
 
Unsurprisingly, as we all navigate our way through the Covid-19 situation, many of us feel like we are trying to solve a seemingly relentless stream of new and unexpected problems.  Not only that, we all need to do more, with less.
 
I hope these short pieces help you and your colleagues meet these challenges and deliver success for your organisations and customers.
 
Part 1.
Problem Solving – The Ultimate Team Game
 
If there’s one single universal truth in the problem-solving field it’s that successful organisations rarely see problem-solving as an individual activity.  They build strong teams, set them clear goals and allocate them the resources that are crucial to uncovering effective solutions.
 
As many of us know all too well, the harsh reality is that solving difficult problems as an individual, trapped within an organisational silo (working from home anyone?), is stressful, offers limited perspective and is seriously fatiguing. Worse still, it’s often extremely ineffective. 
 
Time and time again, I hear the same feedback from individuals who are given isolated ‘problem solving’ roles. Tales of ‘frustration’, ‘lack of support’, ‘physical or emotional energy quickly exhausted’, and naturally, ‘solutions that faulter’. The phrase ‘set up to fail’ is one I hear time and time again.  Is it any surprise that it’s a documented source of workplace stress? 
 
Furthermore, at an organisational level resources that would be best directed at long-term solutions are pointed towards quick-fixes and workarounds.  And if that wasn’t concerning enough, denial, blame and, in some circumstances, even cover-ups are never too far away.  
 
Let’s take a step back and consider any complex and challenging problem. Most senior professionals know all too well that the causes are never isolated, even if the symptoms sometimes are. It’s extremely rare for major problems not to grow and spread across an organisation with little respect for departmental boundaries. For example, a serious problem in Customer Service quickly impacts on Finance, Marketing and Sales Departments and can easily spread further into HR, Compliance and Purchasing functions.  The immediate and visible impacts of a problem usually only represent the tip of the iceberg. If we acknowledge this, we start to get a sense of the futility of asking lone individuals to come up with effective solutions.
 
If you are an experienced manager you probably already have a good sense that capable individuals, even those with an exceptional skillset, rarely, if ever, match the problem-solving ability of well-chosen teams, with their multiple perspectives and diverse thinking. But this takes more than just ‘stacking’ our brightest and best professionals into a team and expecting incremental insights and solutions. The very best problem-solving teams benefit from diversity; broader specialist knowledge combined with complementary skills, different backgrounds and alternative perspectives. Recent reports suggest that upwards of 90 percent of Engineering and Scientific papers are now collaborative, and the medical profession isn’t far behind.  Just a generation ago almost all these papers were solo in origin.  Our world of exponentially greater complexity, it seems, demands far more sophisticated collaboration.
 
Organisations that really get on top of effective problem solving recognise this. Effective problem solving is an investment that offers enormous dividends if managed, resourced and rewarded well. With hundreds of thousands of managers and employees currently working from home or remotely, there is a heightened risk of problem solving and decision making becoming silo’d and atomised. All this at a time when we need the benefits of collaboration the most. Now, more than ever, is the time to select great teams and give them the time and tools to genuinely understand the root causes of the exact problems the business needs to solve.


Ask Yourself:
Do your teams have diverse experiences and offer you multiple perspectives?
Have you enabled them to communicate effectively, either F2F or virtually?
Have they got the time to look beyond the symptoms?
 
Key Point: When a problem appears you rarely see all of it.  Solving it requires carefully assembled, well trained, motivated and adequately resourced teams.  Done well, it is amongst the greatest investment your organisation can ever make.