Three basic (and current) mistakes in Problem Solving

13 Comments

1. Matthew Berry 4 years ago
   FMEA (Failure mode and effects analysis) is a useful methodology in industrial problem solving, extendable to other fields of activity.
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   1. 

      Frédéric Jacq 4 years ago
      You are right, it is a very useful methodology, mainly in product or process design phase. Nevertheless FMEA is more appropriate to limit the risks in an upfront approach, before going "live". Once in the stream, there are more appropriate tools & methods to provide an immediate answer to any critical deviation. Simpler and more accessible to everybody in the organisation, mainly to people in direct contact with the processes, who see the problems from the first row, can compare the contexts and rise relevant potential factors to feed the investigation. Many people rush into the correction phase before identifying the root causes through the investigation phase. They deal with the effects rather than with the causes.
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2. 

   Jean-Francois Lopez 4 years ago
   This is a critical point: many organisations feel that they are good at problem-solving, because they are rushing to action, giving the illusion to be effective and fast, only to temporarily suppress symptoms, but not causes. And then they do not understand why they keep having the same problems over and over! The opposite is true, also. I have too often witnessed the built-up of teams, along many meetings and sophisticated tools, only to discover that the well-thought solution was inadequate - and came too late anyway.
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      Peter Jászberényi 4 years ago
      Good point. Distinguishing symptoms from causes is crucial for efficient problem solving. In particular cases it may be necessary to handle the symptoms first (e.g. extinguish a fire), but identifying and eliminating the causes is the only approach working in long-term.
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         Frédéric Jacq 4 years ago
         Thanks Peter for your very interesting point. Do you have other typical situations when handling with the symptoms first turns to be the good approach? Putting in place a quality wall to filter the non-conformities and protect the customer can be considered as a symptom treatment too. Do you have other examples in mind, please?
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            Peter Jászberényi 4 years ago
            Frederic, this is mainly in situations, where it is essential to "stop the bleeding first", i.e. where the symptoms alone by themselves have strong (potential or real) negative impact on key areas like safety&security, legal obligations, environment, company's reputation, customer relationships. Some examples: a) if there is a dangerosu object in company area, the highest priority is to safely remove it. b) in case of hazardous material leakage, its impact on people and environment shall be minimized first c) if a defective product was delivered to customer then it has to be replaced asap, ... Another type of such situation may occur when it is not trivial to identify and eliminate the cause (e.g. significant process changes are required) and the company cannot afford the symptoms to last for longer time. Here i see as an example also the quality wall that you have mentioned.
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3. 

   Peter Jászberényi 4 years ago
   I fully agree that empowering people to solve problems is good way to utilize their potential (knowledge, experiences) for the organisation. Even though they may need managers approval for implementing the solution, it makes a big difference if they come to manager not just with a problem report, but also with a solution proposal.
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      Frédéric Jacq 4 years ago
      It should be part of the company culture indeed. To protect myself, I use to ask the solution as soon as the problem is reported. Doing so, I build a mindset. I also use to ask my collaborators what they improved today, in order to stimulate the creativity and sense of responsibility.
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4. 

   Henrieta Bodnarova 4 years ago
   One option successful managers use to get employees thinking about problem-solving is to quiz them. Asking questions serves two purposes: It gives the manager much-needed info on what’s going on, and it may help employees better think through all the facts of a situation – and maybe come up with a solution in the process. Another successful way to get staffers to solve their own problems is actually quite simple. Supervisors can ask their staff to always bring at least two or three potential solutions every time they approach their manager for help. Then the manager and the employee can talk about which approach might work best. Another benefit: Doing so may help employees realize that they already know an appropriate answer and can take action on it without involving a higher authority. Be supportive and reward initiative. Sometimes employees who come to managers with solutions to their problems don’t exactly hit on the best answers. But if managers come down hard on them, it gives employees the impression that they can’t make mistakes – which is not what supervisors are trying to do. Instead, managers should be encouraging and supportive of employees who come to them, even if their suggested solutions are lacking.
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5. 

   Brett Guerringue 4 years ago
   I would also add that transparent communication is a key driver in getting out the best ideas and analyzing them. Many times team members can feel they're in danger or will be looked at differently by management if they either bring up and issue or put forward a solution to an issue. The area must be safe for these ideas and communicated well to those who may be responsible for conveying them.
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6. Igor Travnik 4 years ago
   Professional problem solving has two stages: the first stage is the imme-diate correction of the actual situation in order to prevent the crisis and to secure the project execution. The secong stage is to solve consistently the problem in order to prevent the long-term sustainable results. This includes the following steps: 1. the situation inquisition in order to distinguish the problem and its external signs and to prepare the list of the project’s problems, 2. the causes determination for every problem in the list of the project’s pro-blems, 3. the evaluation of possible implications of the problem ignoration on the project success, 4. the decision if it is neccessary to solve the problem. If yes, it follows the step 5, if no, go to the step 2 for the next problem in the list of the pro-ject’s problems, 5. determination of priorities for problems determinated for sloving, 6. proposition of the corrective measures for the problems, 7. evaluation of the variants for the corrective measures and the selection of the most appropriate measure for each problem, 8. the project plan actualization, 9. the realisation of the corrective measures and 10. the evaluation of the problem solvings and docummentation of the obtained lessons learned. For the problem solving there are used primarily these methods: discus-sion, brainstorming, writestorming, negotiation, the ideas roadmap, bank of ideas, problems tree, parametrical estimating, method „Delphi“, lateral thin-king and others. The nonprofessional problem solving takes on several forms of disregar-ding the problems or postponing the problem solving and ends in conflicts.
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7. 

   Viktor Murga, PMP 4 years ago
   Dear Frédéric, I see you started nice discussion about very vast and complex topic. The mistakes in problem solving and perception of problem can vary on several factors. E.g. area, field, country, culture, mentality, etc.. in which particular company does the business. So everyone could write here very long proses. :) I will just comment it from different angle. In the last 3 years I could drive and be a part of transformation from "zero failure" to "fail fast, succeed faster" concept. All of that because of the change from waterfall to agile driven projects. And I can tell so far, it really works nicely! People are not afraid to think out of the box, develop and try new things and learn from failures and problem solving. So this is just another perception of problems. Nevertheless in general, especially in operations it's crucial to solve the problem immediately by workaround, then investigate the root-cause (5 whys or fishbone method are the most effective from my POV), find and implement the proper measure to prevent the same problem in the future.
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8. 

   Hans-Peter Ritt 4 years ago
   Dear Colleagues, you started a very inspiring discussion discussion on a critical and broad topic. Let me contribute only one aspect although there are so many. As a consultant I have seen a lot of problems and approaches to problem solving in organizations. One of the bigest and wide spread approaches is to try to solve the problem too quick. Here in Vienna we have an expression for that: "I do not know where I am drinving to. But I will be there earlyer." Without having all the information on the table and without really knowing what exactly the problem is, you might find a solution fitting to nothing. In my opinion if you have a real critical problem to solve, you do not have a problem. You habe a bunch of troubles instead. Let us use the example of the buning facility. I would not see it as a symptom. Most likely you are having quite a problem. You should address it first - stop the bleeding (The only exception could be a good insurance and your interest to build a new facility instead.)! You will need all the skills and ethusiasm of your team to deal with this problem. Unfortunately your team, every single individual, has other interests and pains too. All in the same time. Just to give a few examples: What businesses, business units, project teams, ... are directly or indirectly affected from the facility out of order? Who needs to be informed? What has to be done in this respect? You might want to know what happened in order to avoid future fire: Who did not do his job? Who made mistakes? Who did not communicate prperly? So basically: Who is guilty? Who will be hanged? And there are budgets involved: This incident might take you out of time and budget. So which budget will fund the delay? Which budget will fund the problem solving? You might not want to be it your project's or unit's budget. Most likely all the others think the same. The really tricky part is that as long as you and all the other team members are occupied with questions like these they cannot devote full energy to the most urgent problem at hand. Somehow you as a manager or leader will have to deal with it. But you do not have time to go into detail - because you have to stop the bleeding first. In my opinion the only way is to strictly focus on the bleeding and in the same time prepare a structure for the other issues. Demostrate to your team members that you respect their pains and you are absolutely willing to deal with these. Practically you could do it with a simple list collecting all the open issues and give a rough plan how you will deal with it. For exemple to schedule a seperate meeting for the budget issues. And show a process how to do the analysis of the problem. You will not touch these issues in deatail until the bleeding has stopped. But by giving specific dates and showing a plan, you will give a clear statement that you take their problems serious. That's the only chance you have to receive the full engagement of your team in solving the most urgent problem(s)
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