Should We Focus on Problems or Solutions?

I’ve developed a hard-earned reputation as a music trivia expert – a status achieved through 10,000-plus hours of passion, toil, and training in some of the grungiest hole-in-the-wall record stores from San Francisco to London.

About ten years ago, in Columbus, Ohio, I ran across one of my best finds – a 1978 UK import cd by Andy Mackay, the sax player for the band Roxy Music. Mackay intended the album as an amalgamation of traditional Chinese music and the progressive rock sound reflected in his work with Roxy. (And, I might add, he succeeded brilliantly.)

I mention the album because its title – Resolving Contradictions – perfectly expresses one of my primary goals with this blog: To show how, by applying the improv mindset, the Daily Improviser can find common ground between ideas, opinions, and concepts that might at first blush appear to be irresolvable. (In this regard, see also my prior article No Contradictions – Just Paradoxes.)

I must admit, though, that sometimes the Resolving Contradictions path can be a rocky one. And I’m currently having to step carefully around two sets of concepts relating to Change Leadership that could potentially trip me up.

On one side, we have the words of Chip Heath and Dan Heath in their book Switch:

“What if [we] had a more positive orientation [toward our world]? …Imagine a world in which after a husband forgot his wife’s birthday, she gave him a big kiss and said, ‘For thirteen out of the last fourteen years you remembered my birthday! That’s wonderful!’ This is not our world. But in times of change, it needs to be. [We have] a problem focus when we need a solution focus…. We need to switch from archaeological problem solving to bright-spot evangelizing…. These flashes of success – these bright spots – can illuminate a road map for action and spark the hope that change is possible.”

On the other side we have William Bridges, who says in his book Managing Transitions:

“[When you’re attempting to change the organization], you may discover that people have trouble understanding the purpose [behind the change] because they do not have a realistic idea of where the organization really stands and what its problems are. In that case, you need to ‘sell the problems’ before you try to sell a solution to those problems. If that wasn’t done during the ending phase – when it should have been done – now is the time to provide answers to these questions: What is the problem? What is the situation that requires this change to solve it? Who says so, and on what evidence? What would occur if no one acted to solve this problem? And what would happen to us if that occurred?”

So – do we line up with experts like the Heaths who advocate a solutions-focused approach to organizational change? Or do we adopt the thinking of an expert like Bridges and instead clarify and “sell” the problem that the change is intended to overcome? Is this yet another case of “pick your expert”?

Well, like Andy Mackay, I think this is a situation where Resolving (seeming) Contradictions would be a worthwhile exercise. I’ll take us further down this rocky path in future articles.