082: Try This When You are Stuck on a Problem

Every single one of us gets paid to solve a problem. The type of problem we solve Is what categorizes us into different job titles.

A sales person is solving a problem for the person he is selling to, but also solving the problem of brining in revenue for his company.

A product owner is solving a problem for the people who will be using his product. The product owner of Salesforce.com is solving the problem of tracking contacts, sales opportunities, and all of the sales metrics that sales leaders need.

An accountant is solving the problem of accurately accounting for the company’s financial health.

A recruiter is solving the problem of hiring other people to solve problems.

So, fundamentally we are all solving problems and you may not even think about it that way. But, sometimes you get into a problem so big, or complex, or maybe so amorphous that you aren’t sure how to fix it.

Today, I want to introduce you to an approach for tackling problems that works well when you are feeling stuck. This is something I first learned from the book Do More Great Work by Michal Bungay Stainer when I read it many, many years ago.

There is a set of 6 questions to ask yourself – or a group – when doing this exercise.

The process is brainstorming with urgency. So, you are going to do this in a rapid-fire type of way. Ask the 1st question and give yourself no more than 5 minutes to write down your answers. As you move onto the next question, reduce your time to 4 minutes. For the remaining questions, give yourself 3 minutes each.

The exercise is designed to get your creative juices flowing. To help you think of things you may not have thought of because they aren’t part of your routine. To expand your options so that you aren’t limiting yourself by unspoken or even unconscious assumptions.

Ok, so let’s do this. To help illustrate the process, I’m going to use an example I’ve run into several times over the course of my career. Let’s say you work for a company that is growing fast, and there is a need to hire a lot of people, but the recruiting efforts so far just aren’t resulting in enough qualified candidates to fill the roles. Its stressful because there is more work to do than there are people to do it and as long as the positions stay unfilled, everyone else suffers.

So, you pull a group of people together and tell them about the problem. Once everybody is clear about the problem, you ask:

1. What ideas do you already have for solving the problem.
   1. In our example, you might list posting the job on 2 additional job boards, asking employees to share the job with their network, and offering a signing bonus.
2. Next, ask what would be the fun thing to do?
   1. You could offer the contest for employees and the person who refers the most qualified candidates wins a prize.
   2. You could send cookies to targeted candidates that were decorated with sayings like ‘come work for us please!”
3. After 4 minutes, ask what’s the easy thing to do?
   1. You could lower your standards and fill the position with less qualified candidates
   2. You could post the same job with multiple job titles to try and catch a wider audience
4. After 3 minutes, ask what’s the bravest thing to do?
   1. You could reach out to a targeted candidate who has not applied and ask them if they are interested
   2. You could look for other venues to recruit – maybe you speak at a local meeting of an association that would potentially have candidates with the skills you need
   3. You could deprioritize some of the work that Is driving the need to hire and recognize that you just can’t get it all done because you don’t have enough people.
5. And finally, ask what would be the provocative thing to do?
   1. You could take out a billboard advertisement next to a competitors office encouraging their employees to apply for your opening (don’t laugh – this has happened in my life twice)
   2. You could make recruiting/referring candidates part of every employees job by making it an objective of their annual review.

Obviously, these ideas may be good or bad, but the point is,, they get you thinking. Coming at a problem from the stand point of ‘what would be fun’ is out of the ordinary, but frees you to think without imposing assumptions that you might not even realize you are imposing.

Chances are, after you do this exercise, you will continue to have ideas about how to solve it in the days to come. With your creative juices flowing you’ll start to make connections between seemingly unrelated problems over the coming days. So, don’t feel like you have to pick a solution as soon as you finish the exercise.
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So, I hope you put this problem solving technique to use the next time you feel stuck. 

If you want to take a deeper dive into this topic, check out Do More Great Work: Stop the Busywork. Start the Work that Matters  (note: this is an Amazon affiliate link. Your cost is the same, but a small portion of your purchase will come back to us to help offset the costs of the podcast)

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• A unique approach to problem solving
• How to get out of your day-to-day mindset
• How to challenge your assumptions
• How to brainstorm with urgency
• How to expand your options when solving a problem

 
 
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