DON’T BRING ME A SOLUTION, BRING ME THE PROBLEM.

Recently talking with friends, I put forward the premise that perhaps problems in healthcare might partly be due to people’s expectations having changed and current services not being aligned with these. I was bemused (but not surprised) when their replies were along the lines of “the public need to be educated”, “there needs to be a better way of rationing resources” and the like. All those reactions focused on solutions to my proposed problem, but not on challenging or examining the premise I was tentatively (at least in my head) putting forward.

This is an example of a very common malaise summed up by the ugly phrase “don’t come to me with problems, come to me with solutions”.

Many of us are problem solvers by nature and this is particularly true of successful middle managers. Rising through organisations by getting things done, often means solving problems as they are presented and successfully overcoming obstacles in whatever way works. This does not encourage analysis of every aspect of a problem or ‘navel gazing’ as it was once described to me by my line manager.

There you go, I’m out of the closet as an analyst - if not at heart, then at least by inclination. So, if you didn’t get my point in the first paragraph and you made it this far, here’s my point. Proposing an action is accepting the premise, moving the conversation into ‘solution mode’. This is where we feel most comfortable – less helpless, moving (forward) towards resolution. This makes it more difficult to ‘move back’ to problem analysis, okay if you hit the root cause first time, but you can’t be sure and it requires a leap of faith.

Solution mode can become a reflex, after all it has served us very well many times. This does not equip people for the different thinking required when you are faced with larger scale planning or design or the challenges of a leading project role. Getting to real root causes is essential in finding effective solutions and this is hampered or misled by prematurely jumping straight into ‘solving‘.

I tackle this tendency with one of the simplest tools to explore cause and effect relationships – the Whys or 5 Whys.

Using this technique requires understanding and tenacity, especially in differentiating between symptoms and root causes. Personally, I don’t follow the rules – getting out the flipchart or whiteboard is not always appropriate or appreciated. I use the basic idea, often an internal process – to generate questions, thereby breaking one of the cardinal principles and several rules in one go! Often the full process or one of the other Root Cause Analysis techniques is needed to identify a root cause, but this is my personal tactic in everyday situations.

My key approach is summed up by the phase “don’t bring me a solution, bring me the problem.”

The point is to encourage anyone to review if they have got to the root cause of a problem before offering a solution. This to me is the critical antidote to the solution first, ask questions later approach that I observe so often.

Dave Walsh PMP, AMBCS