Perhaps a “problem-solving” approach isn’t enough!

Over the past few weeks I have been working on a relatively simple client project – helping a group of people refine their plan.

It is simple in one respect. In the end we will produce a written plan – one they can use both to guide their work and to come back to and reassess when they can see that things have shifted. In another respect, however, it is much more complex.

Because this group has been brought together relatively recently and because the work they are being asked to do is set in a context that is emerging, i.e. constantly changing in response to each thing that happens, many of the conversations we have had haven’t had much to do with defining the problems to be solved and the tasks to be completed. They have had a great deal more to do with questions of identity. No-one has asked it explicitly and directly but it seems to me that two questions they are exploring are:

• Who and what is it that people expect us to be and to do?
• How does that fit with our sense of what this situation seems to be calling for?

Sitting with questions like this can be really difficult. Here’s how UK consultant Johnnie Moore puts it:

… there is so much temptation to take big, decisive action, and take it quickly. It’s easy, for patience and sitting with ambiguity to be denounced as indecisive.

Well known US consultant and author, Peter Block has a similar view:

…  we have a deeply held belief that the way to make a difference in the world is to define problems and needs and then recommend actions to solve those needs.  We are all problem solvers, action oriented and results minded. It is illegal in this culture to leave a meeting without a to-do list. We want measurable outcomes and we want them now. What is hard to grasp is that it is this very mindset which prevents anything fundamental from changing.  We cannot problem solve our way into fundamental change, or transformation.

I am not arguing here against problem-solving per se. When the issues we face are known and understood and the ways to work on them are known or at least knowable, then all is fine. The difficulties we are trying to overcome then, are difficulties of the intellect. Trying to figure out what to do based on known principles and good data.

It is when we are faced with difficulties that are more about emerging situations and particular circumstances that the conventional approaches seem to be less than helpful. What is most frequently a feature of these situations and circumstances, at least for people who lead, manage and organise, is what I will call the participative complexity of them. By this I mean that what happens is dependent on how the people who are participating in the situation act and respond to what’s going on and to each other. As a consequence, in these kinds of situations cause and effect is never linear or predictable. At best we can anticipate a range of possibilities – but even that is constrained by our own view of things.

As I reflect on the work we have done so far I am struck by how much we have begun to identify two different types of situation and to “plan” what will come next accordingly. In some instances the desired “outcome” is clear and a project plan will be very useful (provided we don’t kid ourselves that everything will go exactly to plan). In other circumstances a much more exploratory/experimental approach seems to be called for.

So my questions for this week are:

• To what extent are the difficulties you face in your work “solvable” by the application of known principles and good data (even if you don’t have it yet!)?
• To what extent do the difficulties you face in your work need to be approached “from within” – because you are a participant as much as anyone else – and because you won’t know what will happen until it happens?
• Whichever kind of difficulty you face, are you using methods or disciples that are useful in the circumstances?

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