Our creative director made an interesting observation: You can be a problem solver or problem identifiers. He’s right of course.
His comment got me thinking about a recent client assignment that didn’t go well. The senior managers met to discuss the project. What struck me was the tone of the conversation. This was a group of problem solvers. The discussion spent some time identifying the what went wrong but quickly shifted to ways to solve it, to solutions.
Some influences, as is often the case in companies, were beyond our control. The discussion acknowledged what they were but didn’t dwell on them. Several solutions, ones that we could influence, were contributed, discussed and refined. The resulting decisions will have a positive impact on the team’s ability to deliver better work.
Hip Shots
- A problem solver puts energy into solutions not identification.
- Listen to contributions from all interested parties and push the discussion to a conclusion.
- Focus on what you can solve, not on what you can’t.
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{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
lifted from our Twitter conversation this morning…
@jhipkin one can be both a problem solver and a problem identifier
@davidburn you can be both but more gets done by solvers. Identifying problems is easy, taking action to solve them is hard.
@jhipkin – i agree, but i’ll add that some people can’t distinguish between a problem identifier and a complainer
David Burn´s last blog post..Don’t Consume. Be.