On April 13th 1970, as NASA’s Apollo 13 spacecraft sped towards the Moon, an explosion in an oxygen tank should have ended the flight and the lives of the crew. It didn’t end the flight, the astronauts survived & returned to earth because the “Problem” was solved. NASA succeeded in what it set out to do in the Apollo Program because its people were good at Solving Problems – not just unexpected ones like gas tanks exploding, but expected ones like how to send 45 tons of people and equipment from Earth to the Moon, and bring some of the equipment and all of the people back safely.
Every Organization shares one key attribute with NASA, that is the need to Solve Problems. How well an organization solves their own particular Problems is what determines Success or Failure.
Why? In my experience seeing hundreds of teams and businesses working over many years, the ability to Solve Problems was the one common factor in their success or failure.
Looking through a Problem Solving lens puts a new and different perspective on how teams should work. It turns out to be the reason why culture matters, why Lean or other programs work (or don’t, in many cases..!), why training is effective (or not). It can even explain how many of those annoying things that organizations do – like meetings, performance reporting, site visits, Business Plans etc., even Missions and Values – effect performance. (remember there is no Magic to achieving success…) More on these in later articles…
I recall being told once that a good Education teaches you to “think” or “solve problems”, not just to learn “the answers to problems”. Later, I realized through my working career that I had worked with 2 different types of people. A lot of people I worked with just wanted to know “the answer”, whereas a few sought to “solve the problem”. It turns out this difference is a key point of failure for Organizations. Its also a key failure which is largely invisible to the leaders who cause it. “The Answer” can be fast, usually is, whereas “solving a Problem” takes time, is messy and resource hungry, and outcomes aren’t always what you supposed they’d be. …Read Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman’s “Thinking Fast & Slow” for more...
It’s important to know that not all Problems need to be “solved” – knowing “the answer” is essential to how we live. We learn something so we don’t have to learn it again, that gives us time to learn more things. Some things (like fear of snakes) seem to be encoded in our DNA. When we react to danger we don’t have time to calculate the options, we need to have a pre-built answer, like running away screaming. These “instincts” don’t need to be trained or encouraged. In fact my key point here is that to be successful, leaders have to know when to accept ready-made or fast answers, and when, (and how!) to go into Problem Solving.
Solving Big problems (like how to travel to the moon), get headlines, but our world actually operates on finding the answer to millions of small ones. Solving a mathematical equation, choosing a mate or getting a job are difficult and exciting, (well some of these are exciting…) but the small mundane choices of what to eat, how to travel to work, or how to greet a customer are collectively more important. They are also largely invisible, habit driven or conditioned by upbringing. Usually all 3.
So too it is in business. Whilst the Big decisions (usually changes) about product design, organization structure, capital investment etc. get the headlines, it is the millions of small decisions to be made, problems to be solved, which usually determine success or failure. Big Decisions normally get a lot of attention and are treated as a Problem to be solved – rightly so (though you’d be surprised how often even big decisions aren’t given the attention they deserve – more on this in later articles also). If the Big decisions deserve careful scrutiny and brain-power, and Problem solving, why not then the small as well?
If you want to “see” this in the real business world, just look at one example of the power struggle in leadership between a few “big” problems which engage executives & CEOs and the millions of “small” ones that their employees wrestle with every day. The term “Strategic” can be used as code for “big and important” to denote the superiority of such issues over “operational” problems. How are these terms used in your organization? Are “Strategic” issues more important than “Operational” ones? What is the balance of your time devoted to each?
The attitude towards those millions of small decisions made every day is what sets successful organizations apart from those who aren’t. This is what drives great companies like Toyota and many others, it is the heart of Balanced Kaizen. Far too many leaders, however, are failing to achieve their full potential because they see “Strategy” as where problems need to be solved but only seek “Answers” in their day to day operations. Do you Solve Operational problems or just seek Answers?
Whilst Strategy is critical, and often gets the credit for success – it is smallest of unresolved problems (like whatever caused a spacecraft gas tank to explode) which bring failure.
In following articles I’ll explain how “Problem Solving” can become a way of life at every level of any organization, and so create success.
