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If you focus on the wrong problem, problem-solving strategies are worthless. Bad diagnosis wastes your time, money, and effort. Learning how to diagnose effectively will revolutionise the success of your solutions.
‘Have you got the time?’ My mum beams with delight when someone asks this question; she always gleefully responds ‘yes’. When someone politely asks this question they really mean ‘Can you tell me what the time is?’ ...But technically, it is not what they asked.
Asking the right questions and getting answers consistent with intended queries is critical for business leaders diagnosing business problems. Bad diagnosis is common. Like the issue in this example, there are many diagnosis pitfalls we need to avoid. Good diagnosis ensures a solution that addresses the problem and allows us to improve our solution impact.
A waitress ensuring that orders go to the kitchen correctly. A business leader striving for productivity improvements by changing staff behaviours. The prime minister navigating a road map out of a pandemic induced lockdown. Their job and yours is to solve problems.
As a hiring manager, I rarely received a CV that didn’t cite ‘problem solving skills’. According to neuroscientist Daniel Bor, a research fellow at the University of Sussex, we feel pleasure when we find something that can help us understand deep patterns. When we figure something out by identifying a pattern, we feel good.
The problem we all share is the tendency to jump to solutions without really understanding the root of the problem. We unconsciously seek to solve a problem, any problem, to gain that pleasure feeling. We sometimes address the wrong problem because of this desire to solve.
Do you feel this is happening in your business?
You are not the only one.
85% of surveyed c-suite executives, according to Harvard Business Review, agreed or strongly agreed that their organisations were bad at problem diagnosis.
“The manager who comes up with the right solution to the wrong problem is more dangerous than the manager who comes up with the wrong solution to the right problem”
Peter Drucker
Blackberry continued to solve the problems related to their physical keyboards to ensure they made it easy for business customers to use email on their devices. Blockbuster passed up on a deal with Netflix, then a mail order DVD rental company with ambitions to go online. They didn’t recognise the shifting behaviours of customers as a problem, citing it as a niche market.
Solving the wrong problem will send your business backwards not forwards, no matter how advanced your problem-solving strategies and methods are. Spending money and time on the wrong challenge not only wastes resource it aggravates your staff. If the implemented ‘solution’ calls for change, which it inevitably will, solving the wrong problem will cause staff to further resist change in the future.
It’s frustrating and confusing when solutions that promise performance and improvement don’t deliver. Bad diagnosis rather than a poor problem-solving process is often to blame.
The traditional management wisdom ‘bring me solutions, not problems’ possibly delivers the wrong message to your staff. But then again ‘bring me solutions resulting from effective diagnosis, not problems’ doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.
Successful diagnosis will require more effort but avoiding the right solution to the wrong problem, will more than pay you back.
Effective diagnosis is about four things:
Effective diagnosis isn’t a linear process, each element works hand in hand with the others. It’s the combination of all four elements that leads to good diagnosis. For ease of understanding, I have taken each area in turn.
A friend of mine, Tom, is exceptional at developing high impact brand messages. His process usually involves workshop sessions with key customer staff; working through what they are trying to convey, why it’s important, who their audience is etc. During a workshop session the air felt, well, not right; he wasn’t getting the audience participation he normally fed from. It suddenly dawned on him what the problem might be. He called a spade a spade.
‘Have you been burned by a marketing consultant before?’
They had.
I’ve been a consultant sceptic too, haven’t you? Tarring them with the same brush as all the others I met before. I’ve experienced this in team meetings too, especially when the problem is perceived to be as the result of someone else in the room. Tom was able to create the right environment for productive questioning by addressing the cause of their guardedness and clearing the air.
A productive question environment is open and free from judgement. A healthy rapport develops between questioner and audience and a sense of ‘no silly answers’ exists. Many relationships, situations or predispositions can inhibit the environment, such as experience, company culture or fear of saying the wrong thing. Recognise and eliminate, or at least minimise, them.
What obstacles or assumptions might be blocking effective questioning in the eyes of your audience? What are their interests in solving the problem? What history do they have with the problem? What do you represent to them as a questioner? How do they feel? How do you want them to feel? Can you help set up the right environment for someone you have asked to solve a problem for you?
Understanding the human elements surrounding your questions will not only help create the environment where your audience will comfortably and honestly answer questions, it will help you understand the answers. The difference between what they are saying and what they are trying to say can be enormous. Change their perception of the situation to clear away predispositions.
As a business leader, diagnosing often falls to your staff. If you have delegated, enable the environment by setting the stage for them. Ask them how they plan on enabling honesty and openness before they start diagnosing. Investing upfront with them will move them towards impactful solutions faster.
People tend to be helpful, which 99% of the time is a wonderful thing, however, in the context of answering questions, they answer the question they think you meant to ask. Most people would respond my opening question with ‘It’s 2 o’clock’ but what if I want to find out if they have a watch?
Language is also a challenge; different people interpret the same word in different ways. How many definitions can you think of for the word ‘fast’?
To move quickly, to abstain from food, firmly loyal, firmly rooted, fast food, fast clock, fast track, fast asleep…
I’ve never worked in an office that doesn’t hold a running joke about the number of acronyms and jargon they use. Add to the language issue to the business language and company jargon issue…and you have a recipe for misinterpretation, for both parties.
Those phrases that we know, and love hate; ‘take offline’ or ‘touch base’ or ‘blue sky thinking’ must be very hard to understand if English isn’t your first language. When someone says, ‘take offline’ to me I always take that to mean ‘I don’t want to commit to anything in front of everyone else’.
Sorry, all the annoying phrases that are overused in your office are now ringing in your head, aren’t they?
Making sure you are on the same page about meaning is important.
Be specific about your questions and think about any assumptions your audience might have about what you are asking. Add a clarifying phrase to your question or follow up with a clarifying question. What makes you say that? Why do you think that? The classic 5 Ws we all learned in school; who, what, when, where, why; as a follow up question can help with clarity. Phrasing the question in a different way or from a different standpoint will also ensure the respondent understand the question.
Check your delegate has been specific by using the same clarifiers. Why do they think that? How had they come to that conclusion?
Go through the questions they intend on asking before they undertake the diagnosis to ensure there are lots of clarifying ones planned.
Listening is much more than just hearing; it involves thoughtful attention and consideration. Writing down what they said will only give you part of the picture. Research varies but the formula for communication is often cited as 55% body language; 38% tone of voice and just 7% the actual words that are said. Consider all the information being communicated to you, not just the words, to interpret what your respondent actually means.
If you couldn’t hear the words, what would you think they are saying? Do their tone, body language and words line up? What are they emphasising?
Silence can be a very powerful tool, give them time to answer. Ask a question, listen for the answer, and wait some more. If you wait, many times the person will follow up with more information which will help ensure you are on the same page and prompt further clarifying questions if you’re not.
People don’t lie but they do tell you their version of the truth. Ok, people do lie, but if you have set up your question environment for honest answers, people with tell you truths. What people believe to be facts can sometimes be their truths based on perception developed into facts in their own mind. This is human nature. An entire field of psychology. Type ‘list of cognitive biases’ into a search engine you will see dozens of examples.
When diagnosing problems, the biases I have encountered most often are:
Perception is reality, whether you are interested in the psychology or not, the fact remains. What people perceive to be true is their truth.
You need to validate the information to overcome this. Are you getting the same answers from different groups of people? Are you getting the same answer if you position the question differently?
Hard facts rather than facts based on opinions are an invaluable way to validate information.
Is there data available to back up your findings? Is there data that nullifies what people have told you? Can respondents offer you data? Has your delegate provided you with data to back up what he/she learned from talking with people?
Diagnosing problems is an overlooked art but a critical skill for any business leader.
Diagnosing effectively by
will enable you to diagnose problems better. It will also enable you to probe and verify the diagnosis run by your staff.
Understanding the right problem will give you a much better chance of solving it successfully.
Solving the wrong problem, however elegantly, won’t drive you to your goals. Don’t group with the 85% of businesses that are bad at problem diagnosis. Learn the art and reap the rewards with solutions that work.
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