There is something truly remarkable about the avalanche of blather anent problem-solving, etc. When it first occurred to me, I thought I was missing something. Most of the stuff we’re confronted with about problem-solving etc. is remarkable because it starts near the end of the process. The problem to be solved is offered up as a given. Such as: Here’s the problem. Now here are the seven steps for solving this – or any other – problem.
The problem with this (pun intended) is that the most important step lies in naming the problem. Given that the problem that gets named is the problem that gets addressed, all of this talk about problem-solving etc. misses what is most important – problem-naming. I thought I was missing something. It turns out that there is something missing in most of the recipes about how to do problem-solving.
[Now I could refer to this as problem identification. But that would put the focus on the validity of how it is identified. And that’s largely beside the point. It is whether you are identifying the problem in a way that will get you where you want to go. Problem-naming is not a truth test. It is a test of how well people see the world in terms of their purposes or aims in life.]
Let’s say you’re the CEO. Let’s also say that you ARE the problem. How much time and effort is going to be invested in finding a scapegoat on which all can agree? It seems unlikely that the COO is going to be candid in public about this. I have never seen a CEO arise and announce to all assembled that he is the problem. So you will misname the problem for political reasons.
Otherwise it is sometimes a matter of who is the most persuasive (or most powerful), for those who are the best rhetoricians get to put the tail on the donkey.
But the most remarkable fact of all is this: Most organizational problems get produced or helped along by incompetence. If you took all of the incompetence out of an organization, the number of problems would drop by about 98%. But those who live in glass houses know better than to start throwing stones.
Who, then, given our own shortfalls, is going to bell the cat?
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