Problem Elimination, Not Problem Solving Should Be the New Focus

I met Ballu, a good friend, sometime back.  He happened to be of the very sociable types who always had a tale or two to tell.  Here is an interesting one he narrated.

"Some time back I happened to be in a review meeting and one of the things being discussed was a tool to automate some of the work being done by the people engagement managers.  The biggest selling point was that there are many problems that the team had to address and hence an automated tool would help them manage this in a manner that is simple, gives them flexibility and lets them be mobile and at the same time come up with wonderful snapshot of the problems solved.  This was the problem solving mind-set. And the natural tendency is for people to feel very happy to able to help address and solve problems. And our systems recognize this.  People are rewarded, they are encouraged, they are praised. And the problems continue to appear… from somewhere or the other….and it seemed like there is a factory for manufacturing problem that keep appearing and people waiting to solve them."

Our conversation continued… “How long will this solving the problem stuff continue?.  The next thing was to look for an alternative which was “eliminating the problem”

What we realized was that the more people came up with stories of how they solved a problem the more they were rewarded the more they were glorified…. they were promoted,  they had a great future....and That was the problem.

We needed to change our view point and look at focusing on “problem elimination”. rather than "problem solving"  Remember from my earlier blog on FOCUS.  (Click Here To Read the Focus Blog). So if your choice can be from among two things…solving the problem to eliminating the problem then the one you focus on gets the attention. .

There are some of you (or many..) who would have experienced that the same problems are recurring time and again. What problem we solved last year is up again the next year.  The problems faced by the predecessor are repeated just the way it happened earlier. 

When we focus on “problem elimination” the attention shifts from the problem of how to handle problems to a new way of looking at it… how to eliminate the problem.   What problem elimination means and how it can make our lives (both working and otherwise) more relaxed and enjoyable is what we shall explore in a coming post.

Problem Elimination, Not Problem Solving Should Be the New Focus

I met Ballu, a good friend, sometime back.  He happened to be of the very sociable types who always had a tale or two to tell.  Here is an interesting one he narrated.

"Some time back I happened to be in a review meeting and one of the things being discussed was a tool to automate some of the work being done by the people engagement managers.  The biggest selling point was that there are many problems that the team had to address and hence an automated tool would help them manage this in a manner that is simple, gives them flexibility and lets them be mobile and at the same time come up with wonderful snapshot of the problems solved.  This was the problem solving mind-set. And the natural tendency is for people to feel very happy to able to help address and solve problems. And our systems recognize this.  People are rewarded, they are encouraged, they are praised. And the problems continue to appear… from somewhere or the other….and it seemed like there is a factory for manufacturing problem that keep appearing and people waiting to solve them."

Our conversation continued… “How long will this solving the problem stuff continue?.  The next thing was to look for an alternative which was “eliminating the problem”

What we realized was that the more people came up with stories of how they solved a problem the more they were rewarded the more they were glorified…. they were promoted,  they had a great future....and That was the problem.

We needed to change our view point and look at focusing on “problem elimination”. rather than "problem solving"  Remember from my earlier blog on FOCUS.  (Click Here To Read the Focus Blog). So if your choice can be from among two things…solving the problem to eliminating the problem then the one you focus on gets the attention. .

There are some of you (or many..) who would have experienced that the same problems are recurring time and again. What problem we solved last year is up again the next year.  The problems faced by the predecessor are repeated just the way it happened earlier. 

When we focus on “problem elimination” the attention shifts from the problem of how to handle problems to a new way of looking at it… how to eliminate the problem.   What problem elimination means and how it can make our lives (both working and otherwise) more relaxed and enjoyable is what we shall explore in a coming post.

Solve, Don't Manage the Problem

In hindsight everything appears simple and uncomplicated !!

Have you realized that we take many many things for granted.  What is there is a simple chemical reaction such as 2 parts of hydrogen combined with one part of oxygen gives 2 parts of water...  or the fact that we human beings tend to display five levels of needs ranging from physiological to esteem at the other end.  In hindsight everything seems so simple and straitjacketed to the non discerning but to have thought of it this way and put the effort to come up with the framework or the model or the reaction or the observation is the challenge not everyone can do all the time.

Organizations have problems and HR functions have their own share and in every problem lies an opportunity to come up with some serious creative solutions.... a galore of opportunities if I may say so. But often I find that people are good at identifying the problem and defining it but the transition to finding the creative solution is missing.   

What gets focus is how to manage the problem and not solve the problem.  This comes from our patterned thinking and we look for patterns to be imposed on any problem we see. If we don't see a ready pattern we try to force fit one.  Therefore one outcome would be : Here's a problem how do I react.... Needs to be managed and keep the boat from rocking and bingo.... that is the end objective.  

To realize that the root of the problem needs to be fixed we should break out from that pattern and make  a determined effort to do so.  This involves many simple and effective steps.  We'll look at examples and how to issues in the coming post

Urgent Versus Important

President Eisenhower once said "The Urgent Problems are Seldom the Important Ones".  This can't be more true even in today's context .  Incidentally life is much more complex, much more fast paced, urgent and demanding than earlier days.  

Further the internet boom has brought in so much information at our finger tips and at the click of the button that one cannot find time to focus on something without getting distracted. If you are working on a word document for an hour you must have felt the urging need to go online and inform your friends on Facebook or Twitter of how you are enjoying every minute of your writing or,  the tingling urge to browse the internet.   Coupled with those distractions is the temptation to respond to that beep on your hand phone or tablet alerting you of a message waiting or a update from one of your favorite apps. 

Given this urgency and sense of distraction how do you remain on top of your priorities.   These priorities stare at an average person every hour of the living day.  Be it a professional working in office, a lawyer, or even a script writer.  How do you handle your day to day priorities becomes the top issue many times.   Missed deadlines,  abandoned personal goals,  a fuming boss,  a irate customer are all downsides of not being able to keep pace.   This leads to more and more accumulation and you end up with a Himalayan task of prioritizing and re-prioritizing.    What would help is to step back and think about that long to-do list you have.  Just having one does not guarantee you are moving well on the tasks to be completed.   Are you effective or trying to be efficient in the process. 

Here are few things you can do to make most of the avalanche of items on your  to-do list. These simple steps will soon make you more effective in your daily tasks and can lead you towards improved overall performance and reduced urgency and stressful moments.

a) Pareto to the Rescue:  Use the 80:20 principle to segregate the list of your pending items into vital few and trivial many.   Pick up the top 3 to 5 things you want to sort as key priorities among the several awaiting your action.  Call them your Top Priority one's.  Remember the key is that it is not enough to know what to do but also know what not to do. 

b) Use those Ever Increasing Constellation of Apps:  Be it android or iOS you will find several hundred planning tools, to do lists which can help you with alerts, alarms and reminders.  Put these Top Priorities into the calendar and keep coasting along as you finish them one by one.  For the technologically uninitiated there's always the daily diary or the planner book that can come in handy.

c) Distance Yourself  from Those Digital Distractions: You need to put away these distractions like the SMS to waiting to be read, the latest Tweet from your rock star hero or the latest update on weather, or the email from office  all arriving incessantly into the digital device.  Keep a time window for such activity and stick to it.  If you follow that routine then it starts getting ingrained in your mind, in a few days the sub conscious sub system of the mind learns to rewire our brain circuit

d) Make Time for Reflection:  In the hurry and pace of daily life we rarely stop to look back on the day gone by.  It would be a good idea to look at how you had done on the things you did each day.  You would need not more than 5 to 8 minutes and this exercise also helps you to identify any priority items that you may have to focus on the next day.   The human mind has a uncanny ability to tune out what is not in focus and one could easily avoid missing out something which might fall between the no light hours that separate the two days.

e) What Are the Other Distractions:  Do you have too many things going on at the same time.  It is said that human's multitasking are more likely to make mistakes.  This is due to context switching leading to reduced attention.  However it is not impossible and people can be trained and become better at multitasking but that is only after training.  Otherwise several studies do show the down side of effectiveness while multitasking. So try to focus on the tasks one at a time as the brain needs to refocus as you switch between tasks making use of mental energy.   So this goes back to making a priority lists as in point a and re-look at what's important, whats not before you race ahead.   Some of us think we are experts at multitasking then you need to have a shared understanding - it is about doing two unrelated tasks.  Second the brain has an ability to switch rapidly between one and the other task so we should not confuse that with multitasking.

So next time think when you are overwhelmed by a long list of to do items.  Remember that efficiency can be in contrast with effectiveness and the choice is in our hands.