Being a Problem Spotter and a Problem Solver

Welcome to today's TED talk... okay my writing style isn't even good enough for TED X (I'm on the first line and I've already digressed, how very TED X). I am enjoying the oxymoronic and circular nature of this paragraph though.

Moving swiftly on! I like working on 6000 thousand things at once. I know there are a million papers on the internet that say that is just rubbish for productivity and it just means you do lots of things badly but I disagree. I'm sure I'm not unique in this and I am also sure it isn't true for lots of people but it is for me. My example, related to my previous article, it's like riding a motorbike - at any given moment you are:

• Monitoring revs and changing gear as appropriate
• Checking speed and adjusting throttle as required
• Looking at directions to ensure you arrive at your destination
• Modulating two independent sets of brakes
• Monitoring grip of both wheels independently and adjusting throttle, brakes and steering input if needed (sometimes very quickly!)
• Road surface condition
• The cars behind you
• Cars waiting at junctions or in adjacent lanes
• Traffic ahead of you (don't forget pedestrians who might step between traffic while you're filtering)
• Operating condition of the bike (temp, fuel, indicators etc.)
• Weather conditions
• Your own fitness to ride (bladder state, tiredness, warmth etc.)
• The other 300 things that I can't recall right now...

You miscalculate any of these things and it can be quite a painful lesson but I find riding relaxing. I guess some people would call it mindful but an hour on the bike is worth everything to me. I promise I will give the bike analogies a rest for a while after this article...

So how does this tie in to the title of this article? Well it relates to my love of complex interdependencies; I find it makes it easy to spot problems. I'm 100% sure there are other ways to do it and probably better ones too but this way works well for me.

You observe, you piece together, you breathe then you react. Just like I do on the bike. You put all the relatively simple things together, quickly and repeatedly until you have the full picture. Don't forget that breathing step! See the challenges, see the problems and act purposefully to resolve them. If you don't think before you act then you might get away with it, hell you might even make things better but I bet you 90% of the time you will make things worse. How? Well by constantly taking action without thinking through the repercussions of what you're doing and how that will drive the outcomes you're looking for then you will end up going around in circles or confusing everyone.

Sometimes you need to get in to the weeds of problems and sometimes you need to not. Being too close to all the details can result in missing the bigger picture but you need to know where all your corners are and how things fit together.

So that's a bit of my theory on how to be a problem spotter and problem solver.

As always there is more to it but this is some of my basic process. Thank you for coming to my TED talk and don't forget to tip your waiting staff (Editor: I don't think they encourage you to tip the staff at the end of TED talks…).