How the “Bring a Solution” Rule Backfires
The “bring a solution” rule is leadership’s strategy for dealing with complainers. Don’t bring up a problem without bringing a solution also. Smart leaders ask for two or three options.
The “bring a solution” rule means:
- Don’t expect others to solve your problems.
- Don’t expect me to be responsible for your problems.
- Take ownership yourself.
Backfire:
The “bring a solution” rule lets weak leaders off the hook.
Leaders deal with whiners, complainers, and gossips by throwing problems back at the people that bring them up. “That will shut them up.”
Rather than bring up problems, some issues may just go underground.
The “bring a solution” approach may allow issues that should be addressed to fester.
Option:
Engage in the problem solving process. Don’t throw problems back in the face of those who bring them up, collaborate.
- Define and describe the problem or issue.
- Clarify the reason it’s important.
- What’s bad about the problem?
- What would be happening if the problem didn’t exist? Work toward positive solutions more than solving pain points.
- Ask, “What are our options?” Generating a list of options pops the cork on pressure to be right.
- Choose an option. Take action.
- Evaluate in a few days. What’s working? What needs to be better?
Bonus: Avoid mission creep. Keep problem solving as simple as possible.
Don’t hide behind the “bring a solution” rule. Connect with people who bring up issues by engaging with them. Working to solve issues with people doesn’t mean you’re solving problems for people.
What strategies are you using to deal with whiners, complainers, and gossips?
How can leaders engage in problem solving without taking ownership of every issue?
I think it is also necessary to allow ALL possible solution suggestions during the brainstorming process. People can’t be afraid to think of solutions that seem way outside the box. Too often the best ideas get shelved quickly because they are so unique. They have never been thought of before.
Ultimately those “way out in left field ideas” often become the best solutions.
No “eye rolling” or laughter that ridicules others during the brainstorming process. Every idea is encouraged and recorded for later analysis. Later the group may find that the best solution is a combination of two ideas.
Fear of seeming ridiculous will keep people from thinking and sharing creatively. It takes a talented leader to set a tone of enforced acceptance during the brainstorming process.
Thanks Dauna. Great seeing you here. Hope you are well.
Withholding judgement takes real discipline. I view it as an act of respect for the person who offers their ideas.
Cheers
HOW THE “BRING A SOLUTION” RULE BACKFIRES
The first thing to me the Leader should do when one of his people comes up with a problem is to understand his ‘follower’ living the adagio of Saint Francis, which I always paraphrase as : “Lord Grant me the wisdom that I first seek to appreciatively understand, before being appreciatively understood”. Living this ‘rule’ demonstrate the Leaders’ respect (wich is obviously not the case using the ‘bring the solution’ Rule).
Once the problem is understood this way (which includes the answers to the question: What is the problem? Why is it a problem? What are the consequences if the problem is not solve, …) Leader and follower should, it the problem is really a problem, find together the ‘owner’ of the problem.
Then a sort of guided brainstorm session, which I use to call SYNERGY, has to be run in order to solve the problem. SYNERGY is a combination of the two greatest secrets of the US: the works of Synectics AND of dr Charles Leroy (Charlie) Palmgren (who has identified the conditions needed for and tools of the Creative Interchange Process- Process being first identified that way by Henry Nelson Wiepman).
Some features of SYNERGY:
1. The problem owner forms a group of people, including the Leader and the ‘plaintiff’, of so-called knowledgeable people.
2. He explains the problem in detail AND what he already has done to solve it
3. After this explanation, the participants propose their paraphrase of the problem, in a certain form: I wish…, I would like…. How could we …
4. The problem owner, which is called the client in SYNERGY, picks one of those wordings of the problem and looks at the participants for help (ideas to solve the problem)
5 the first idea is picked up (those of the participants that have ideas And are not the first one to express it, write them down on a sheet of SYNERGY-structed paper) by the Client
6 That client has to use the tool of Charlie’s approach. ‘Confirmed paraphrasing’ to proof that he has really understood the idea
7 when the participants confirms the paraphrasing of the Client
8 the later has to find 4 plusses in the Idea before he can utter a whish (this tool is far more respectful than the so wide spread Idea killer: Yes, But)
….
SYNERGY is a Great iterative Method and very effective. If you want a full picture, please find the most hidden Secret of Nord America Charlie Palmgren, I’m only his SI-BE-ENG friend
Creatively,
Johan
I humbly disagree on the views of ‘daunaeasley’. In my views, brainstorming is a sheer waste of time, energy and resources. Most of the participants just try to give junk solutions to indicate their active participation leading to useless and wasteful debate on such ideas/solutions, as the author of any idea usually don’t want to get his idea thrown down eaily in the dust bin. May he be the creator of rubbish ideas, nut he alsways tries to pose that he is the generator of the best ideas.
So far the author’s views are concerned that “no ‘eye rolling’ or laughter that ridicules others during the brainstorming process,” you cannot stop any participant to ridicule other’s ideas, Needless to emphasize, a brainstorming process is considered as a free style discussion where laughter or criticism of other’s ideas cannot be avoided. Moreover, brainstorming process creates a competitive environment where any participant cannot expect restrictions to be imposed on him during discussion.
In fact, on the spot ideas/solutions are never so useful, as are expected to cause more damage and loss, rather than benefits. Except in damage control or crisis control situations, solutions have necessarily to be thought with cool mind after weighing pros & cons of the solution. The need is to moot the proposal with adequate background of the problem in time and the proposed participants should be given appropriate time to ponder over the issue. Since human brain does not remain idle at any time (even during sleep hours), idea for betterment of solution can crop up any time other than working hours in the mind of the originator to help modify that before responding to the proposal at the time of debate. Thus, only the useful ideas/solutions would come forward to be adopted individually or in combination with each other to have a much better solution of the problem without wasting the constructive work hours of a leader.
Okay ideas, but I generally do not find the above to be as much of a problem as the boss who is simply unavailable for new ideas, the one that is just not interested. MGM founder Samuel Goldwyn expressed that as, “When I want your opinion, I’ll give it to you.”
I see that mentality more than the behavior of “bring me a solution.” (It is done more subtly but the net effect becomes, “don’t bother me” when judged over time…)
I kind of illustrated that a few minutes ago, in response to a friend’s email comment, so the timing of this is interesting. See this, “Hey Boss!” Square Wheels LEGO image here:
http://poemsontheworkplace.com/2014/07/20/lego-square-wheels-of-continuous-improvement-hey-boss/
My take on things is simple: What can we do to get more bosses to simply LISTEN for ideas.
.
Thanks Scott. Nicely said. The resolve to listen is challenging. Leaders may feel so much time pressure that they excuse themselves from the exercise. Cheers
Dan, I was really glad to see this post. As a leader, I engage in problem-solving with my staff, fighting the urge to give the solution I believe would be correct while trying to create dialogue.Collaboration allows the team to share in the success.
Thanks Donna. I feel the pull to give solutions…to solve things fast. But, going slow at the beginning by collaborating enables us to go fast at the end. Glad you stopped in… cheers
Hi Dan, thank you for writing about this topic. Agree with your point about the back-fire effect on the ‘bring a solution’ rule. Problems might just go underground. I think a leader having a mentoring and coaching mindset will, in a long run, assist growth and self ownership of the employees. Lead them to come up with the solutions, not taking over the ownership by asking leading questions.
Thanks pwa… Glad you brought the coaching style of leadership to the conversation. I hope this approach continues gaining ground.
I am guilty of pushing back on my leadership team on bringing solutions with problems . The only extra thing I do is that I question heavily on why that problem needs to be solved at all. Most of the time to defend the problem , my team thinks it through deep enough to find possible solutions . But I guess I also risk some to fall through the cracks
Thank you Vijay. Your transparency is remarkable. One thing you said really has traction for me. “…why the problem needs solving at all.” Sometimes we work on issues that don’t require any attention.
I can see that questioning the need to solve a problem could put people ill at ease. It also serves a useful purpose. Openness to people may be part of success in this area. Cheers
celebrating good solutions is what I use as the most as a balancing act for pushing back on my team. I don’t always succeed in pushing back – it can occasionally be quite counter productive and someone could interpret it as my lack of interest in their work
I have noticed that often times when an employee comes with a problem, they have an answer in mind but have not verbalized it to anyone. If the problem is reiterated back to them (for understanding between both parties), then a few possibilities thrown out into the conversation, with a following, “What do you think?” they often solve their own problem but have the benefit of the supervisor’s approval and of knowing that their idea was validated, thus they are validated. Or the “what do you think” could come first.
Here’s what I believe is the problem with “Bring Me Your Solution” leadership: It’s asking a team to bring the wrong thing to the decision making process. The thing a leader can demand from a team without being autocratic is Learning. Learning must precede Solution-choosing. Three good things happen when a leader asks for Learning from a team instead of a Solution: 1) Each of the team’s members can make a unique contribution to the process, thus making it more collaborative; 2) the decision regarding the Solution becomes more objective, because the Learning adds context; 3) Learning determines how innovative the Solution must be–i.e. the Learning reveals whether a Solution already exists, or whether it’ll have to be created, in part or in whole (think API vs. off-the-shelf). In my world, I see no shortage of Solutions. I see a shortage of the sufficient context for decision-making about Solutions. Learning provides it. Thanks for the post. Very provocative and timely topic.
Another great post and I totally agree that don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions backfires in a major way for precisely the reason you pointed out. It gives weak leaders an easy out to not have to ‘lead’.
When we know and understand that we still live in a compliant culture in many ways, being aware of this as a leader is half the battle. Once we stop ‘fighting’ the truth that many people are ‘compliant’, we can then quit treating people who come to us with problems without solutions as yet another problem and treat the situation for what it is. An opportunity to LEAD!
An opportunity to recognize that this person has ‘learned’ to be dependent on others to solve problems for whatever reason. OR…
Perhaps they do have some solutions but feel like they need permission from the leader FIRST (hesitancy and perhaps a little insecurity and/or people pleasing mixed in )
This is not an opportunity to ‘diss’ your people for not being full-fledged INDEPENDENT free thinking leaders themselves yet! If that were the case, WHY would they need YOU as a their leader!? haha
It’s an opportunity to ask some key questions in order to UNDERSTAND where this person is at in their own learning and growth. How can you guide them or FREE them and give them permission to think for themselves, to risk coming up with some ideas and solutions even if they don’t work. Start rewarding the ACT of coming up with numerous solutions and let people know that if a solution doesn’t work, no one is a failure, etc. So people aren’t so afraid of looking stupid.
There’s many things a leader can do to ASSIST their people to become more interdependent free thinkers and solvers and less co-dependent. But it’s not going to happen overnight with people.
People have to learn it.
Great post Dan.
People are generally good with quick fixes. A real leader should stay in tune with the environment of his team and provide the platform for discussions for solutions to problems whenever necessary. I often tell our management level staff that, if support staff can not only get the work done, but also find ways to fix areas that are broken, then we have no need for management level staff. I agree that most managers have taken “don’t come to me without a solution” as their mantra. Real managers should make themselves available to review the quick fixes to determine if at the end of the day, more efforts and time will be required to fix what was fixed to seemingly solve the problems. The other misplaced practise is “Empowerment”. Most managers cited empowerment as reason why they leave their staff alone to do the work and to only come to them when they needed help. Coupled with the mantra of “don’t come to me without a solution”. The end result is often disastrous and we have witness many of this over the last decade or so.
Managers are employed to manage. Let us do our job right, at every level.