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Problem Solving
Free downloads
Download discussion papers and "start here" advice for your own initiatives or to motivate others.
Authored by members of the EncourageMentors Group, these articles contain discussions of concepts, tips, references and useful "start here" ideas to support your own initiatives. Use them too, to interest and motivate others or to help generate discussion.
We are continually developing new materials for this service. To receive updates, register as a subscriber to our complimentary ezine, Encouraging Progress.
Each article may be downloaded free. We ask that you respect the copyright and always acknowledge the author and original source.
Check Your Feedback practices - and Your Confidence
Risky, damaging and expensive crises often arise in the workplace through unwisely improvisational approaches to letting people know what is required and how their behaviours affect others or impact on organisational performance.
In the desire to encourage independence and growth, managers, especially senior managers are often caught in a bind of their own making. Read more, download free.
Check Your Expectations of Your Organisation
What you find challenging about your leaders, managers or colleagues may be a direct result of and reveal more about the organisational structure, systems, processes and culture than anything else. If so, this may help you appreciate that sometimes, we are all in this together, experiencing different facets of the same problem: we are getting the behaviours our organisations designed and perpetuate.
Addressing the challenges from this perspective can lead to useful insights and considerate, constructive actions. Read more, download free.
Practise Self-responsibility
Most of us have barely scratched the surface of our own capacity for everyday effectiveness, partly because we expect, want or wait for others to change first. We make their unwelcome behaviours the focus of our unfocused and ineffective change efforts rather than realising our own potential for greater effectiveness or more direct influence.
Important, far-reaching change is often more possible than it seems. Read more, download free.
The problem is the problem
Most of my clients tell me that from time to time they and their teams address workplace problems. In fact, they do rather a lot of it. So I ask, what problem solving model do you use? There's a micro-pause in their breathing and a momentary silence as though I've posed an indelicate question about personal hygiene. What eventually follows this fleeting freeze amounts to an explanation I could almost write the script for, I've heard it so often . . . Read more, download free.
Ain't It Awful
They sat near me on an early morning flight, three sharply-dressed people, sufficiently loud, articulate and interesting for me to pay some attention to their conversation. Mid-level managers in a high-tech industry, I figured. Over the next 50 minutes they agreed, repeatedly, that they could be vastly more effective if it weren't for their staff, colleagues, senior managers and clients who, in various creative ways, stuffed up and impeded their progress. Yes, this was definitely an Ain't It Awful group.
Most organisations have them and they're more prevalent in some than others. They can form anywhere at any time at all levels of seniority, in pairs or larger arrangements no matter what the group's original purpose for meeting.
The predominant theme is consensus that we could be more successful, happy and achieving if it wasn't for those appalling SOB's and pathetic individuals who get in our way. Wherever Ain't it awful groups exist you can be confident that certain things are going on in the lives of their members and certain conditions are present in their organisations. Read more, download free.
How effective is your problem-solving? (Test yourself)
Most organisations take a conventionally superficial approach to problem-solving: they deal with symptoms, not root causes, causing "solved" problems to eventually resurface in more challenging, more complex forms. People become frustrated or apathetic, and weary of reworking the same old recycled issues.
Although individuals and groups may be authorised to fix workplace problems themselves, the greater the effort they put into making this process work, the more their energy is wasted.
As Jim Clemmer puts it, Empowering people without changing the processes, structure or systems they work in is worse than useless. It increases helplessness and cynicism. It's like 'empowering' a pumpkin seed in a Mason jar to become a full grown, well-rounded pumpkin - but leaving it in the jar.
By introducing a better approach to problem-solving and training people in the skills to apply it, organisations can create the basis for dealing effectively with criticism, hostility, negative feedback and conflict. What's more -
- There'd be fewer instances of staff being unwilling to tell emperors they're naked.
- They'd have fewer crises, debilitating differences, squabbles and rows.
- Staff would be better able to give feedback, discuss performance and sensitive issues.
- People would experience themselves as better heard and understood too, because listening and effective questioning are basic tools for the process.
How constructive is your problem-solving technique? How well does your team or group deal with day-to-day problems?
Test yourself »
Common approaches to imperilling organisational frogs
Every day, thousands of organisational frogs move on to The Big Swamp in the Sky because it's alarmingly easy to kill them.
When placed in water already too warm, a frog will leave immediately but if placed in cold water it accommodates gradually increasing heat (smiling all the while) until it dies, because the rising discomfort is almost imperceptible.
It's a good analogy for many workplace crises and challenges: you may not know you're in difficulty until it's too late. The realisation that something is very wrong came, people often claim, as a total surprise. Well, yes and no . . .
The very good news . . ? No matter how many frogs you've already dispatched and whatever number you're currently warming, there are very simple things you can do to reduce or eliminate the phenomenon. Provided you know where you're heading and have a clear picture of where you are right now, you can start immediately to make the difference that makes the difference. Read more, download free.
Saving frogs. It's what we specialise in.
Paying Attention at Meetings
Assignment:
Help a client group reduce wasted effort and staff complaints about The System.
Project Phase #1:
Act as Silent-Observer-of-Process at their management meeting (14 people, approximately 95.27 minutes) to raise awareness of their unconscious group behaviours and unintended consequences.
Observations, as follows:
- A ratio of nine closed questions (and many unhelpful answers) is asked for every open-ended question. The questioners express frustration about not getting enough of the information they want, fast enough. Those questioned (sometimes with double-barreled or triple-barreled closed questions), appear confused or under interrogation and riled.
- Negligible paraphrasing of long-windedness or differences. Few progress-monitoring summaries of often-meandering dialogue. In the rush to get through the agenda, no opportunities are provided to talk information into place within smaller groups. At times people appear over-loaded or confused by TMUI: Too Much Unsorted Information.
- Problem-solving efforts begin by defining problems as the absence of (very specific) solutions. Then, heated arguments about those and other solutions. Stages of problem definition and the clarification of likely causes are completely by-passed.
Conclusions:
Nothing new, here. This group behaves as other organisations routinely do (in this case at meetings), wasting a great deal of potential energy, blaming one another for the consequences without understanding the causes. They get through the agenda, but at significant cost.
What should change? Where to start? Read more, download free
Select and contact a Mentor if you'd like to discuss these ideas or want support to make progress with your own issues.
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