A lot of people struggle to identify the “real” problem they have.
I do a lot of work with organizations in making changes. There is always a reason for the change - the problem we are trying to solve in implementing the change (or sometimes the wonderful new world we are trying to create). However, many people struggle to describe or define the “problem”. And when the reasoning behind the change isn’t clear, we often get confusion and resistance to the change. And then we don’t get the results we have anticipated as a result of making the change. Or maybe we implemented a solution that removed one symptom but then made another symptom worse.
What seems to be going on is that we are working on the wrong problem. I see two variants of this challenge:
One is that the problems are things that we see today that we don’t like. Sales are lower than desired. Products break in transit. Managers “fight” over key resources to get work done. These are symptoms, and often people want to implement changes to address those symptoms. This is where the various root cause analysis techniques come into play. What is going on in the system that is causing these symptoms to appear? Why do these symptoms continue to arise - surely we’ve tried to resolve some of these in the past, but the solution hasn’t “stuck” or it hasn’t worked. Why not? What have we assumed about the environment that may not always be valid?
The other is that the problem is defined as the “absence of the solution.” (This topic is where the blog post title arises.) If my problem is “we don’t have X” then clearly the solution is the “have X”. Some examples - “We lack focus", “We don’t do enough testing”, “Our goals are unclear.” Obviously, the solution is “focus” or “more testing” or “better goals.” Hopefully, you get the idea.
But these aren’t really problems. They are simply what we think the solution should be to something else. Once again, root cause analysis can help. But maybe some different questions here can help kick start the process. If you don’t have X, what do you have? What happens because that thing is missing? This might lead to more symptoms, which can be fodder for a deeper analysis. But it can also open up our minds as to what is really happening in the system.
This set of questions is also a great way to start thinking about what we do today because of the problem. If we “solve” the problem but we keep operating the same way, then it is likely that many of the symptoms will remain. In designing a solution, we need to consider not only fixing the specific problem but also changing how we work now that the core issue is no longer there. And if we can’t change how we work, it could be that the core problem is actually a deeper challenge that needs to be addressed.
Fun!
I have been thinking about this topic for a while. Back in 2007 I blogged about The problem with problem statements that included a link to Jon Miller talking about his Top Ten problems with problem statements. Comments there are still valid.