Problem solving requires a new thinking

Trying to fix a personal, business, mechanical or electrical problem, I don′t know how many times in my life I was stuck in the same patterns of thinking. I started over and raced down the same rathole time and time again. The bigger the stakes, the more it happened to me. It is like a paralysis of thoughts.

Maybe, it is just me, but the rewarding thing about consulting is learning, that, apparently, it is not. Many people are caught in a time loop like in the movie “Ground-hogs day”, where the main character tries to escape just to wake up every morning to the same song in the radio of Sonny and Cher′s “I got you babe” and re-living that same day again.

It seems that the harder I try, the less I can get out of a loop that leads to the same conclusions again and again. My real problem is to spend way too much time without mustering the guts to break the pattern.

The only thing that worked for me: change the perspective which meant physically changing the surroundings. But getting up and leaving the problem is the hardest thing to do for me. However, it has tremendously accelerated problem solving for me. Next is sharing: a German proverb states that shared loads are half the weight. Sounds a bit silly at first, but it is very similar to how pilots are trained when they have issues during flight: the “3 C′s”. Climb, Communicate and Confess.

Climb: focus your attention on a change of location giving you more options. The higher you are, the more range to safer places you can achieve. Leaving your desk will provide more opportunities for valuable input.

Communicate: in an airplane, you would turn on your radio and start calling. In a private or business situation, try to establish a communication with others. You never know what options lie behind the horizon of your desk, office or house.

Confess: Personally, I am obsessed with perfection. In my world, confessing is losing. But actually, it is not: losing is not solving the problem. Leaving out options is actually silly, but hard when the brain is wired in a different way. Talking to others about my riddle at hand has time and time again accelerated and improved solutions. It is a team effort and it is not wrong to get some help to change your thinking as Mr. Einstein suggested.

Stay curious – stay relevant.

@mktginouterrim

www.mktginouterrim.com

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