I’ve posted before about Problem Solving, but what I continue to see so often is an unwillingness to try to solve problems at all. If you call out problems, insist there is nothing to do about them, and reject all solutions offered, it hurts what you’re trying to accomplish on your project team, and it harms the energy you bring to the team as a leader. Identifying problems, risks, and issues before they are realized is an important management skill. You also have to be able to remove or mitigate those roadblocks and achieve positive outcomes. How do you keep an open mind when it comes to problem solving?
It benefits you as a leader and as an individual to keep an open mind when faced with problems, risks, and issues at work. If you’re a leader, the team will look to your example as someone who is proactive in moving toward issue resolution. Other teams will want to work with you. If you are an individual contributor, keeping an open mindset will help you find solutions to the problems that you face.
The truth is, if you’re being closed-minded about problem solving, you might not even realize it. It takes conscious effort to evaluate your own behavior. When you’re in the middle of identifying or solving a problem at work, consider how you’re approaching the problem and how you could be perceived by others. After you identify a problem at work, a simple question to ask yourself is, “Am I sincerely trying to solve the problem?” If you’re having trouble scrutinizing your own behavior objectively, consider asking a trusted coworker or friend to give you feedback.
Next time you’re faced with a problem at work, especially one you’re working through with others, remind yourself of these two things:
- See the big picture
I used to work with a person who would attend meetings, leaning back in his chair, sit with his arms crossed, and continuously comment negatively on the conversation. His body language and his actual language gave the impression he was not willing to work with the team on accomplishing the project at hand. Interestingly, he was extremely committed to the success of the project, but this was how he chose to participate in meetings as a member of the team. He was apt at being in the details and identifying issues. However, he was not willing to take a step back to see the big picture and help solve them.
If you are a critical observer, someone who scrutinizes the details and looks for inconsistencies and flaws, your perspective is valuable to a project success. When you only come to the table with issues and risks, and not solutions, it hurts what you are trying to accomplish. When faced with a problem, it is easy to be stuck in the details and not be able to see anything else but the problem. The details are usually where the problem lies, but it’s not always where the solution is found. It’s necessary to be able to see the big picture.
Take a step back and see the entire landscape of every single area the problem touches. This includes things like the project schedule, budget, other dependent projects or tasks, and every single person involved. If it helps, write these things down so you can take action towards being able to see the big picture. This activity helps contextualize the problem within the big picture.
It can also help to also remind yourself of the overall project goal in an attempt to interpret the problem within the big picture. What is the overall project goal? If this problem is inhibiting the project from moving along, what can be done to fix that? Can you do something to make sure the project is still successful and the goals of the project are still achieved despite this problem? This task forces you to step outside of the details back to seeing the overall project goal.
- Consider other perspectives
On a recent project, a person on the team sent a lengthy email to all of the executives on the project citing a risk to the completion of a particular development piece of the project that he was overseeing. In his email, he did not offer a solution. When asked to help mitigate the risk, he insisted there was nothing anyone could do. The risk mitigation agreed by the rest of the team was to come together and regularly share information on the status of the project – we wanted to increase communication and collaboration. Unfortunately, he said he would not participate in this mitigation. In other words, he refused to help mitigate the risk he identified. As a key person on the team, the project team needed his cooperation in order to be successful. His behavior was interpreted widely by the team and the executives as he was positioning himself to be able to say “I told you so” when things went wrong.
Collaboration with diverse thoughts and perspectives is how teams come up with the most creative and effective solutions and ideas. It’s important that you allow yourself to consider other points of view. This is true of all types of teamwork. It is also important when problem solving.
Take the time to contemplate other suggestions and the possibility of trying another way. In this scenario, you might ask others for their help in solving a problem, or others offer their help because you’re already working together.
If you’re not convinced that another solution offered by someone else will solve the problem you should do two things: Think through the solution on your own and talk through it with the person who offered it. Reflect on the impact of the problem at hand, and the ways in which the solution offered may lessen the impact or solve the problem completely. Make the effort to understand.
In the example above, whether or not the person had the best interest of the project in mind was unknown because of his hard stance against working with the rest of the team to solve the problem. When you are unwilling to work with others and immediately dismiss their ideas, it won’t help you or the team solve the problem, and it won’t make your leadership skills look great either! If you struggle with this kind of collaboration, when you take the time to consider other perspectives as legitimate and worthy of your respect, you might be surprised at what kind of outcomes you can achieve.
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