Practice Problem Solving

Practice problem-solving activities.

Practitioners: tactical, integrative, and strategic

This might seem like another obvious idea, but how many of our teams have had any training or guidance on root cause problem solving. How often do we practice problem solving when we want to teach our team something about their processes?

In a recent engagement with a large corporate client, I was invited to conduct root cause problem-solving training. At first it seemed like old hat. “Oh, this is a waste of time, we know this already”, I heard. It became a case of easier said than done.

This first step is always the hardest. Define a clear and effective problem statement. Easy. The two teams I worked with were scheduled two weeks apart. The first team took eight hours to battle through to a problem statement that they could agree upon.

The second team got wind of this challenge and thought it humorous, until they took eight hours to land on a problem statement themselves. As it turns out without clarity around the objective and outcome, understanding and defining the problem is next to impossible.

Practice Problem Solving

This example illustrates the challenges we face in root cause problem-solving. Had we not challenged the problem statements appropriately, we could have moved on too quickly and solved a problem that offered no value to the organization and missed the strategic imperative we had been given by the CEO.

In the end, our solution not only solved the problem, but it delighted the CEO with its robustness, and its impact was far greater than even he had anticipated.