Problem solving module

Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.

— Reinhold Niebuhr

The question was given to a bunch of engineers: how do we make the journey to Paris better? They came up with a very good solution: spend £6 billion building completely new tracks from London to the coast, knocking 40 minutes off a 3½ hour journey. But it strikes me as an unimaginative way of improving a train journey merely to make it shorter. What you should in fact do is employ all the world’s top male and female supermodels, pay them to walk the length of the train handing out free Château Petrus for the duration of the journey. You’ll still have about £3 billion pounds left and people will ask for the trains to be slowed down.

— Rory Sutherland

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

— Henry Ford

The problem

• What is your problem? defining the issue as you see it. We will get to whether your problem is the problem later.

• Your agenda: What are you trying to do? What happens if you don’t do it?
• Tried and failed: What have you tried to fix the problem?

• Why didn’t it work? If you had a magic wand, how would you fix the problem? What, or who, stops that happening? These are blockers.

• Identify the blocker: This could be:

• A “rule”: An established process, internal policy, contract, cultural norm, convention, law, regulation, etc) (including how they are applied by people).
• Inadequate tools: You don’t have the tools or resources you need to do the job, or they’re not good enough;
• A person: A human being human not responding, not understanding, not having time to help, not agreeing that there’s a problem, not agreeing with your solution, refusing to help or being positively destructive
• Your own capacity: You don’t personally have the ability or capacity to carry out the task.

What to do now

• Containment: what can you do to contain the situation and make sure it doesn't get worse?

Diagnosis

• Conflicting mandates: Where that “what” or “who” is a person or process with a mandate: What is that mandate? How is that person or process trying to achieve it? Is it inherently contradictory?

• Negotiations:

• How much flexibility is there in the conflicting mandate? What sort of things could be changed to help you without disrupting that mandate?
• Psychological approaches: If it isn't working for you, likely it isn't working out for him/her either.

• what problems does the mandate holder have in carrying out that mandate?
• what is her blocker?

Approaches

• I can fix it
• I can’t fix it

• Live with it
• Pass it on to someone else who can live with it
• Pass it on to someone else who can’t live with it but who might be able to fix it.