Making Better Problems

(If the suggestion of questionable language upsets you, you may not want to read further.)

Human beings need problems to solve. It is how we make meaning, more or less. Some problems are terrible: war, famine, pestilence, bi-annual performance reviews. Some problems are just annoying: traffic when we're late, winter, grading papers for grammar. The thing is, problems never go away. If they did, life would be pretty meaningless. But what problems CAN do is get better.

I've been listening to the Audible version of Mark Manson's self-realism book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck. I call it a self-realism book because it is more about getting real with what it means to be a human being than anything else. Manson uses personal stories, historical examples, and the patterns that emerge therefrom to make common sense statements about being human.

Not surprisingly it relates also to things comprised of human beings: organizations. 

One big take-away, perhaps the biggest for me, is that it is important to get real about your values and create actionable, immediate metrics by which to measure the alignment of said values with your everyday choices. Few things inspire apathy in me like the word metrics, but still Manson has a great point. For example, if an organization claims they value employee development, a metric might be the resources they actually provide employees for professional development. If no real resources (time, funds, access, etc) are found in the accounting files, that organizational value is a sham.

It takes serious and intentional self-reflection, for both individuals and organizations, to first name values then authentically decipher if everyday actions are aligned with those values or not. It is like intentionally spilling the contents of a bowl - it is messy and uncomfortable and it needs to be.

This is the work of premise transformation and it is work that needs to be uncomfortable or we're not doing it right. Like a seed case breaking to allow the seedling to grow, and the resultant vulnerability of a seedling as it grows into a plant, staring honestly at our actions and metrics to understand the extent of their alignment requires breaking out of our version of how we think things are and allowing the space for there to exist some ugly truths.

The good thing is that once we see the ugly, aka our problems of alignment, we can take steps to pretty it up. As human beings we are problem solvers; we will FIND problems to solve. When personal and organizational resources are tight, what better way to effectively problem solve than look honestly at what our problems are. Does that make all the problems go away, is that the Holy Grail? Nope, but what we do get are increasingly better problems to solve.

Take-away: the goal of transformative development is the making of better problems.

Action step: intentionally look at your values to see if your behaviors align. If you're not sure what your values are, look at where you put your time and what stresses you out. Being stressed out is a signal that actions and values are not in alignment.