How do you solve a problem?

Whatever business you’re in, the chances are something will go wrong sooner or later – or not go quite as well as it could – so you need to fix it.

Many people implement a potential solution without giving it enough consideration or analysis, investing time and effort into a hastily devised solution.

Sometimes they will be right, but often they are wrong, and the time and effort are wasted.

Sometimes that inappropriate solution has just made the situation worse – the problem has become more complicated.

The first step is to identify the problem. That sounds obvious, but you would be amazed how much effort is wasted tracking down a problem that, in the end, is based on someone’s opinion but not borne out by the facts!

A classic example is: ‘The internet is slow today’.

The quick resolution of this is to: ‘Reboot the hub’.

Which has disturbed everyone in the business and caused some delays – maybe only for a few minutes, but still a disturbance.

What should and could be different?

Using this same example, run a speed test on the PC in question. Run a speed test on other PCs and if you notice a marked difference between the first PC and the rest, you have eliminated the hub as the cause.

That’s the key word in problem solving – ‘eliminate’.

When considering a problem, take the time to analyse all the possible causes and then proceed to eliminate them one by one.

Advance methodically by selecting those causes you think are most likely and eliminate them first. And if the first solution won’t solve the problem, you know what the original situation was and can come up with other possible causes to investigate.

Deadlines are not optional

A word that’s often misused by businesses is ‘deadline’.

The dictionary definitions of a deadline are:

1) A line drawn within or around a prison that a prisoner passes at the risk of being shot

2 a) A date or time before which something must be done

2 b) The time after which copy is not accepted for a particular issue of a publication

Definition 2 (a) ‘A date or time before which something must be done’ is the one that’s applicable to business (unless you are a publisher, in which case 2 (b) would also apply).

I have often observed that people’s attitude towards deadlines is such that they overlook the word ‘must’, as detailed in the dictionary definition. The ‘deadline’ is treated as a target date, with few or no consequences being imposed for missing that target.

Incidentally, I would not remotely suggest that the consequence for missing a deadline, or overstepping one, should be shooting someone – although I must confess, I have been tempted!

If there are no consequences for missing a deadline, it’s very likely that people will develop an attitude indicating that deadlines don’t matter or are unimportant at best. So shipment dates are missed and projects are delayed. One of the oldest adages says, ‘Time is Money’. And time wasted is money wasted.

Deadlines attaching to projects are particularly important. Projects are often multi-stage, with phases that rely upon the results or output from the previous stage. If you miss the deadline for one stage, everything after that stage will also be delayed.

Changing people’s attitude towards deadlines is vitally important. This will take time but involves only two steps.

The first step is to identify who owns the project or process: who has ultimate responsibility for the deadline?

However, there are many situations where accountability isn’t clear – it may be shared, with no single manager owning the process. This is messy and can lead to a blame culture in which ‘It’s someone else’s fault’ is the underlying theme. Someone has to take ownership. They are then empowered to hold the other contributors to account.

The second step is to hold the owner to account. That doesn’t mean a public roasting is required.  Just maintain the emphasis on the deadline.

As simple as it can be

Simplifying things is a challenge for any business. If you have a simple process, people can follow it without making mistakes. If you have a complex process, mistakes can and will be made.

I find that quality management systems often appear to be over-complicated. There’s a theory that goes something like this –

‘The system is important. Important things are complex and difficult to understand, so they are written in complex language.’

If you add to this theory the individual who overplays the difficulty of their job, you have the quality management system that becomes a bureaucratic nightmare  –  otherwise known as the business prevention system.

Those are the systems that people hate. They are seen as restrictive, serving only to enforce compliance.

One recent experience with a customer – a very large organisation – illustrates this. They were returning a unit to us for some additional development work, but the unit had been purchased as a standard unit, not for development.

We’d agreed in April to do some further work. In July, after several emails, we got a reply from someone in the customer’s team, a frustrated engineer. He told us –

‘I can’t send you the unit. It’s sitting on my desk, but it’s so far into our systems that I can’t work out  how to send it back to you.’

I’m sure these were exceptional circumstances, but it’s an example of a system hindering the business.

However, if you can take a step back and look at the reasons why particular processes or procedures exist, you may find some nuggets of value.

A procedure or process often came into existence to resolve a problem. Over time, extra layers were added. The result is that you end up with a complex mess.

When you set about simplifying a process or procedure, start by asking, ‘Why does this exist?’ and create a simple process to deal with just that: ‘Why?’.

If that’s not possible, perhaps the process is trying to do too much?

You’re likely to find examples of trying to do too much when you examine  complex assembly processes. We have processes that are extremely complex – one product we analysed recently had 174 parts. Any process that tries to capture such a large assembly of parts is going to be complex.

However, it’s possible to view that product as a number of different sub-assemblies. Each of those can still be regarded as complex, but there are probably only 30 parts in the most complex of them.

We have an overall procedure in place to assemble this product, but the lead procedure is simple and refers to the sub-assembly procedures, which in turn are also simple.

Making a process or procedure simple isn’t easy – but it can add great value to your business.