Even The Best Managers Don’t Have All The Answers

The majority of problems in business are fairly straightforward to resolve. We have experienced them before and we know what needs to be done to address them. We can just move to action or assign the responsibility to address the problem to one or more of our team. Job done! 

Sometimes, using traditional problem-solving techniques, we are too quick to move to action.  Sometime in the future, the problem resurfaces, even though we think we have dealt with it previously. Often in our rush to move to action, we have addressed the immediate issue, but not the deeper, underlying challenges that have led to it.

Albert Einstein once said: “If I had a very complex problem to solve in one hour and my life depended on it, I would spend 50 minutes framing the problem and ten minutes to solve it.”

In a pressurised business environment, many managers would feel the need to rush to a solution, rather than taking the time to fully understand the problem.

In the more complex and deeper issues around culture and values, Einstein’s approach may well be useful – with a slight twist. The world is changing at an ever-rapid pace and we can more regularly run into problems that we haven’t experienced before (such as the pandemic).

We may understand the problem or challenge, but not how to address it. We may sometimes not even fully understand the problem.

Work is often not done as imagined (as per policy, procedure, etc), and many managers can be quite disconnected from what is really happening at the sharp end.  This being the case  means that a group of managers meeting to find a solution may not come up with the right answer.

Senior managers don’t have all of the answers, especially to those deeper and more complex business challenges, and especially when work as imagined is very different to work as actually done.  

WhyNot believes that giving work back to your staff is the way of addressing this. Involve them in your business’s deepest challenges and ask them what is behind the problem and what ideas they have for addressing the challenge. You may be surprised by the knowledge they have and the ideas for improvement they can provide if you empower them to do so. 

Giving work back to your staff requires humility, patience and courage and can be very uncomfortable to start with. 

Humility, because you are admitting that you don’t have all of the answers and you need your staff’s help in solving problems. 

Patience, because involving your staff takes longer and asking a good question may only lead to a better question rather than the answer. 

Courage, because there are rarely any silver bullets to these deeper challenges and you will probably have to try a lot of things that sometimes may not work. 

Addressing challenges this way can be time consuming and frustrating but involving your people means they feel part of the solution and more likely to engage with any resulting change.  

It will also result in a lot of the traditional problems disappearing as the underlying challenges are addressed, freeing up time. This type of process is key to transforming your culture and releasing the potential in your people.

To find out how best to go about transforming your business culture so that problem solving is not just about rushing to action, get in touch with the WhyNot Partnering team today.