Problem-Solving, Once More

It wouldn’t be worth paying so much attention to problem-solving (a) if it were not clearly the heart of the matter, and (b) if most people hadn’t gotten it so wrong. Not that this will illuminate the rightful path from here on. But who knows? It might help.

The point of this added reconsideration is simple enough: It is that people identify problems according to the solutions they imagine they have available for solving those particular problems.

In other words, and as a very practical matter, solutions precede problems in the scheme of things. People start with their favorite solutions to their favorite problems and work backwards. It is solutions that define problems. Not the other way around. That’s why the actual problems so rarely get solved. With a hammer in your hand, all the world appears to be nails. We wander around the organization like a bundle of solutions, looking for a problem to claim as our own. In any contest about what the problem “is,” bet on the solution that is most likely to win the day.

If a problem doesn’t have champions who have solutions in their holsters, it won’t even be seen. So we  spend inordinate amounts of time and effort solving the same problems over and over again, Meanwhile, the real problems hang around, virus-like, waiting for another opportunity to be mistaken for the one we solved last week. It’s clearly perverse. But what isn’t, when people are involved?

We solve the problems for which we have workable solutions. That’s one reason why people don’t really change much. And why change is so difficult to bring off. If we needed to change we would already have done it, wouldn’t we? That makes a non-problem out of a perennial one.

There’s a lot more to this. But you’ve got to crack an egg if you want to make an omelet. If we think we’ve got a problem, we will put the person having the most experience with that kind of problem on the case. This makes problem-solving a little bit like a Wild West show. There you’ll see in action people who amaze us with their ability to solve a problem they’ve concocted because they can amaze us with the solution. Can you even imagine it doesn’t work that way?