Walk the Week - Embrace Manic Mondays

The Bangles back in 1986 (before we all worked online or from home) sang “Have to catch an early train, got to be at work by nine – It’s just another manic Monday – Wish it were Sunday”. These are sentiments we can all empathise with even if we are just moving from one room in our home to another (and moving a reluctant cat from our work chair), but especially if we are going into the office and there is a traffic jam, or the trains are delayed. The best train operator excuse I have encountered on just such a day was “swans on the line”! Seems very British. But the theme I want to develop is not so much the problem as the opportunity. I have written short blogs about problem solving some years ago – see Walk the Week – Effective Problem Resolution and Walk the Week - Think Solutions Not Problems. However, rereading these I think I only scratched the surface of the topic and in particular how to approach the inevitable manic Mondays in our professional working lives, anticipating and actually embracing them.

What triggered this was a potential last minute hitch this week in a deal I have been working on for some months. My initial reaction was frankly some annoyance, especially as we had all put a lot of hours into the transaction and I had little control over what was really a legitimate business issue. But as I calmed down and started to approach the situation more rationally, I began to realise that actually not only is every problem an opportunity to learn, but without them none of us would have professional careers in the first place. There would be no lawyers without complex contract negotiations or disputes, no accountants without financial reporting, and (sadly) no doctors without sick people. Professions emerged to address specific needs or challenges within society. As Charles Dickens once famously remarked “If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers”. So, I changed my mindset, and started to think of a solution or way forward on this particular challenge to the extent I as a lawyer could contribute.

Once we start to think in this way the “manic Monday” becomes an opportunity to demonstrate and develop problem solving skills and showcase our value to our firms or businesses. See this more general blog Why is problem-solving important in the workplace? (And tips) which suggests that strong problem-solving skills mean “You have the ability to handle difficult or unexpected situations in the workplace or help your employer overcome complex business challenges”. This skill set is beneficial in a number of ways:

·?????? It inspires better time-management

·?????? It encourages you to think unconventionally

·?????? It motivates you to work well under pressure.

The theme I am developing is that we should see problems as opportunities; if you are stuck on a train (most of which have Wi-Fi these days) use the delay to catch up on correspondence or do some preparation or drafting. Once we approach challenges in this way, then dealing with the issue is far easier and less stressful. As this short management blog Problems are Your Opportunities! suggests “When a problem occurs, instead of first exploring how to get the problem to go away, first stop and ask yourself: What is the opportunity here? This is the key to innovative problem solving. It's understanding that the problems you face are opportunities — no matter how frustrating they appear to be at first”. See also this older but still apposite blog How to Change Your Mindset to See Problems as Opportunitieswhich commences “Talk to any successful entrepreneur, or any professional with a positive attitude, and you'll find one key trait in common: all of them have a unique mentality that allows them to handle challenges differently. Rather than seeing problems as burdensome forces of opposition, they see problems as opportunities--opportunities to learn, grow, improve, or adjust in a way that leaves them better off than before the problem existed”.

And rising to this problem-solving challenge is increasingly important in our modern interconnected business world. See this Forbes article Stopping The Insanity: A Modern Approach To Solving Today’s Complex, Recurring Problemswhich suggests we need an updated approach “Today’s modern socio-technical working environments put tremendous pressure on human performance and create a new breed of intricate, multifaceted problems. This includes the proliferation of high technology; matrixed organization charts where we serve multiple bosses with a plethora of collateral duties….”. It advocates the use of six keys including:

·?????? Critical Thinking - The unbiased and intellectually disciplined process of gathering, organizing and analyzing data, evidence and information…

·?????? Systems Thinking ….conduct a systems inventory of affected programs, processes and procedures to establish a holistic approach that attacks problems from multiple perspectives.

·?????? In-Depth Causal Analysis ……uncovers the small set of deep-seated causes that have far-ranging effects and will continue to generate events.

Once we start seeing problems not as a nuisance but instead as an opportunity to exhibit our professional and management skills, then we can start working far better on how to solve them. See, for example, this really good 2024 Harvard Business Review article To Solve a Tough Problem, Reframe It which proposes that instead of rushing into solutions it is critical to examine and define problems in depth – which is often not done because of time pressure. It therefore advises that “When we work with organizations and teams, we encourage them to spend more time up front on problem-framing, a process for understanding and defining a problem. Exploring frames is like looking at a scene through various camera lenses while adjusting your angle, aperture, and focus”. It then offers some tools to help do this, with good illustrations, including:

Phase 1: Expand In the first phase, set aside preconceptions and open your mind. We recommend using a tool called frame-storming, which encourages a comprehensive exploration of an issue and its nuances.

Phase 2: Examine If the expand phase is about identifying all the facets of a problem, this one is about diving deep to identify root causes.

Phase 3: Empathize In this phase, the focus is on the stakeholders—employees, customers, clients, investors, supply chain partners, and other parties—who are most central to and affected by the problem under investigation.

In applying this “structured approach for conscientiously engaging with complex problems before leaping to solutions” they cite a quote from Albert Einstein I have used before in blogs but is particularly apposite to this challenge “If I had one hour to solve a problem, I would spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about the solution.”

In another quote Duke Ellington summed this all up nicely when he said: “A problem is a chance to do your best”.