Things Are Not As Simple As You Think– Do Leaders Know How to Solve Problems?

The other day I went to the refrigerator in our garage to get a beer. I opened the door and noticed the light was out. I thought, “It must be the bulb.” Wrong!

I called to my wife that the bulb was out in the outside refrigerator and not to be alarmed. I would pick up a new bulb at the store later that day.

I bought a new bulb and went straight to the refrigerator when I got home. After screwing in the blub it didn’t work. “Now what?”, I asked. I noticed the air from the inside of the refrigerator was not as cold as usual. “Oh my gosh” I thought. “I bet the plug was accidently pulled.” I checked it. Wrong! The plug was in. “What is going on?”, I asked.

Later than day I was vacuuming the house and when I plugged the vacuum into an upstairs bathroom it didn’t work. The refrigerator light bulb still didn’t work but the one in my head went on. The circuit breaker must have tripped! I went to the basement and flipped the circuit breaker. Sure enough, the vacuum worked and so did the refrigerator (and the bulb). It was the circuit breaker all along. Or so I thought. But, what was the root cause of the circuit breaker tripping?

As leaders we can learn from this story about how to solve problems. Very often Leaders are approached by employees because a problem has surfaced. A leader will jump to a conclusion and an immediate action to solve the problem. It is so easy to just jump in with a solution and not think about “How can we optimize learning.” However, if the leader jumps in too often with an immediate solution he/she is encouraging employees to be dependent and not independent.

Isn’t it better to provide employees with a predictable problem solving model that employees can use themselves? Isn’t it better to “teach people to fish than to provide fish for them when they are hungry?”

A question I always ask managers at a new client is, “Are you proactive or reactive when solving problems?” They always rate themselves poorly admitting they a more reactive and not proactive. This creates tremendous waste and that waste is very often immeasurable. It doesn’t show up as a line item on the Profit and Loss statements.

I had just used the leaf blower in an outside outlet. I thought, “That must be the problem! It was the leaf blower!” I tested my theory by running the leaf blower again from that outlet. I checked the refrigerator and the circuit breaker. Both were working fine. I was confused. I still didn’t know the root cause.

The predictable problem solving model (learning model) is the Shewhart Model (or also known as the Deming Model) i.e. “Plan - Do - Study – Act”. The Plan step includes these questions:
• Is it important that we fix this problem? Is it a priority?
• What do we want? What is the ideal? What is the vision?
• What problem do we specifically want to solve?
• What is the root causes of the failure?
• How will we solve it?
• How will we know it is solved?

Let’s apply this to my refrigerator/circuit breaker problem. It is very important I fix this because if the refrigerator stops working long enough, the food will spoil. I have a good deal of food there that I depend upon.

My vision is, I want to be sure the refrigerator works regardless of what happens and I want to be sure I check the circuit breaker to be sure it has not tripped. Ideally I want to correct the problem so the breaker doesn’t ever trip.

I will solve it with small experiments using the P-D-S-A Learning model.
I will know it works when I occasionally inspect the circuit breaker and it is still on.

Now let’s move to the Do step. This step means you implement your plan. In my example I would test different appliances in each circuit in the house and on the outside of the house. I would check the refrigerator after each test. I would record the data afterwards.

The Study step is the analysis of the data. Here are some questions we can ask:
• What does the data tell us?
• Are we achieving the results we expected?
• What did we learn?
• Can we change the system to achieve the results we want every time?

For the refrigerator I would review which outlets might have tripped the circuit breaker, if any, and then formulate a repair process for those outlets.

The final step is the Act section. This is where we implement our conclusions from the analysis step. In my case, I would repair any of the outlets that showed up needing repair when the data was collected.

As a leader how are you solving problems? Are you jumping in with your ideas first for the sake of expediency (go buy a bulb)? Are you training your employees to depend upon you for the solutions for their problems instead of depending upon themselves? Are you missing an opportunity to train your people to be more autonomous? Are you creating more of a bureaucratic than an entrepreneurial organization?

Take time to learn the problem solving model. Use it. As you can see, even a simple problem like a refrigerator can baffle you or waste your time. If you don’t use a predictable process you will definitely waste your time and money.