The value in this method is that by focusing on what you want the solution to be as opposed to focusing on the problem, your energy and focus can be put into developing action steps towards the solution. The problem is known and acknowledged AND the solution is found in examining what you know, what resources you have and need in order to solve your problems in your context and in learning how to continually improve.
Much of the confusion and frustration comes from having too many layers of management in the organization. In other words:
Like Collins in Good-to-Great, getting the right people on the bus in the right seat is important. Unfortunately companies keep adding seats and squeezing in extra and unnecessary layers. Causing increased tension and everyone feeling squished, micromanaged, distrusted and unsafe.
What would you do right now if you could do whatever you wanted to?
Because if you don’t know what you would do, if you could do whatever you wanted to. How in the world can you know what you would do under constraints?
At the core of of what has been called motivation is to value something. If we value something we will go after it.
We all have problems, every team has problems, every organization has problems I have not yet met a manager yet who doesn’t have problems…
The amazing thing about the amount of problems we face is that there are just as many solutions – some you have already found and some you just got to look for.
It has happened to all of us, someone at work (your manager, coworker, subordinate, peer, vendor, customer, etc…) pisses you off and you go off an angry tirade about how resistant and uncooperative they are.
On and on and on.
While these statements may be true, they are not really useful in creating any solutions and changes to getting your work done.
Innovation is a repeatable system-that-drives behavior in people, that are goal driven (by a Manager, themselves, or a customer), to fix an existing problem OR to fix an hypothesized future problem.
Group-Think: over time, a set of individuals working on a project will tend to think the same way, believe the same conclusions and results. This group mindset leads to psychological inertia, as new members are introduced instead of pursuing new ideas provided by “a fresh pair of eyes” the group tries to assimilate new members to existing thinking.
This video is a great, showing how our unconscious mind is in more control than we think.
We all have an uncanny inflated sense of our own abilities, and tend to think that those who are not like us, think like us, act like us, drive like us, work like us, etc… are clearly wrong and irrational.
Instead of creating failure charts, root cause analysis, and using a system of trial and error the simplest way is to start at the cheese and follow the path back to the mouse. By identifying the solution first, What we want to have happen, an easier solution can be found.