Stuck With a Problem? 4 Strategies to Expand Your Thinking and Create Space for Solutions

Have you ever been hobbled as a project stalls and stagnates, hamstrung by the incompetence of someone in another department? This?harbinger of conflict ?can be a challenge for my coaching clients.

Jochen, a marketing executive, and his counterpart in sales, Meena, worked well together. Two of their three joint projects were proceeding smoothly but the third was mired in politics impeding progress, focused on quantification rather than quality content, and seemingly doomed to never delight customers.

Jochen realized that Robert, who ran the project, was the problem. Firing Robert would smooth the groove. But Robert reported to Meena, not Jochen, and he felt hesitant to have a gritty conversation that might gunk up his otherwise friction-free working relationship with Meena.

I agreed with Jochen that if he approached Meena insisting she needed to let Robert, go she might dig in defensively, and point fingers toward his team—leading to a standoff on the already struggling initiative.

Jochen needed to zoom out and imagine multiple possible narratives for why the project was stumbling. Even if Robert was an issue, would removing him from the equation solve the problem?

Here are four ways to develop multiple narratives to?holistically diagnose a problem prior to solving it .

1.??????Envision the future with the troublesome individual replaced.?Imagine the scenario if someone new—whom you have personally hired and have confidence in—comes in to replace your “Robert.” Fast forward six months. Will all problems have magically disappeared, or are some of the same issues still recurring? If it’s the latter, the challenge is not (just) the person; other dynamics are in play. Jochen’s problematic project, when evaluated from this perspective, was different from the others he and Meena collaborated on. The other two were brand new, blank slates for unfettered innovation. The floundering project needed to fulfill its promise to existing customers and was constrained by how much change they would accept. This limited creativity. Viewing problems in a person-agnostic way helps us future-proof against the tendency to first see all problems as personnel-related. Our?wider-angle vision ?aids in resolving thorny situations based on a more comprehensive picture of the problem.

2.??????Expand the time horizon.?Revisit the past, before the problematic person arrived. What were the dynamics? What are the culture and identity of the project? What actions have previously been rewarded or rejected? Jochen’s initiative had been part of his company’s largest product. It came imprinted with expectations and dynamics when it was cleaved off into Jochen’s smaller division. By understanding a project’s legacy, and pressures from the past that still cling to it, we are better armed to jettison the associated but now irrelevant baggage.

3.??????Understand the self-interest in choosing a single story.?It’s?tempting to lay blame ?at the feet of a problem child. We are quick to point fingers to deflect any blame from sticking to us. After our conversation, Jochen realized that by loudly and clearly naming Robert as the challenge, he could avert examination of his team and their shortcomings. Blaming others may help us survive the current storm, but the real challenges will continue to fester and forecast a bigger failure in the future.

4.??????Examine your part in the drama.?It feels heroic to swoop in amid a problem and be viewed as the diviner of the solution. But this can blind us to the fact that our actions may have a negative impact on results. Jochen’s initial impulse to ask Meena to fire Robert was likely to boomerang. Meena would have felt immediately on the defensive, her authority challenged. Instead, Jochen approached Meena with, “Here are my concerns. What do you see as the issues? I have three possible ideas about what might be happening; can we talk about it and figure out next steps together?” Jochen moved the conversation from potential conflict to collaboration. By asking a colleague to add to our hypotheses, we can avoid writing an entire novel based on a narrow narrative.

Once we looked at Jochen’s situation through many lenses, he realized that while Robert was a problem, there were also other contributing factors. Jochen understood how he could approach a conversation with Meena focused not just on finding fault with her direct report, but also taking accountability for his own failings, and within the context of the broader organization and its history.

We often feel the urge to immediately offer a solution whenever a problem appears. Instead, we can pause and step back to?imagine multiple possible narratives ?about the roots of the obstacles to our objectives. When we address our challenges in a more holistic manner, we are less susceptible to repeat occurrences, better equipped to expand our options to address problems, and able to engage our colleagues as collaborators rather than competitors in solving them.

This article first appeared on Forbes in January 2021.?https://www.forbes.com/sites/sabinanawaz/2021/01/25/stuck-with-a-problem-4-strategies-to-expand-your-thinking-and-create-space-for-solutions/?sh=3eda6c9a1f33

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