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Every company will face complications. whether the enterprise is a mature business or a growing start-up There will be challenges that arise daily. Boundaries are constantly made, challenged, and moved.
A well-recognized chorus is that employees handily deliver issues, but not solutions. When something goes dismal, the employee wants to satiate the anxiety and tells everyone that there is an issue. However, most don’t bring options to resolve the issues. Instead, this comes with a lot of finger-pointing and blaming. Individuals clutter to find a fall guy and a canopy for their own actions. They work to look after what they have done ensure others recognize that they are blameless. All the time and effort spent of managing the fall out of issues would have been better spent in identifying and working towards solutions.
The key is to ensure accountability in the person and process to ensure that everyone is working towards resolving either a client’s issue or an internal issue. There needs to be a single-minded focus towards resolving the issue, instead of managing blame.
Identification
The first step is to acknowledge that it is a larger problem than one realizes. It may not be an isolated incident. It is likely the leadership style that contributes to this issue by constantly harping on tiny issues and always looking to punish at the drop of a hat. This percolates down to staff and the toxic environment forms.
As a result, staff avoid taking risks and getting caught. Now, instead of proposing a solution, they will stay out of the management radar. Better stay low and hide that to risk proposing a solution and getting targeted.
When a problem comes up, what should we do? Should we look for solutions or blame those who came up with bad ideas?
The approach to this should be to encourage new thought processes by reframing the problem to focus on only solution finding. Look for ideas that work in the short and long term. Small steps, one at a time culminate in the creation of a solid long-term solution. The idea is to see that the issue never repeats.
Here is an example. An HR resource had to print the list of all employees for a report and billing purpose. It turns out that the printer ran out of paper and the last page of names did not get printed. HR submitted the list, and the fallout was bad as several employees’ time did not get invoiced. The company lost a little reputation for so silly an oversight.
Instead of pointing fingers, management threw open the door asking for solutions. An encouraging culture helped resolve this issue quickly. A suggestion was made to add an “End of File” text on every file. All departments were informed to look for this “End of File” printed. There was never an issue repeated like this again.
All it took was a few minutes to implement this change. But the years of encouraging and motivational culture was what led to this. Problem solving is in-built into the organization’s culture.
Options
We discover that when trying to find solutions, we see that there usually isn’t a perfect one. The choice always seems to be a pick among many bad options. Or rather, picking the least bad option. This too should be encouraged as moving forward is always better than analysis paralysis. The perfect solution is always to never make the mistake. But once made, an iterative process of improving solutions is the key.
Forgive and Forget
While looking for approaches, it is best to not point out who made the mistake in the first place or who was the solution blocker. Making an example might be a warning to others but it will not help create the risk-taking culture of accountability that is most required.
We at Uniquode coach employees from the get-go. We work with them individually and in teams, and ensure they understand what they did wrong and what they should have done. All this is done without judgement. It is a learning process for everyone. If they take time to delivery, it is ok, if there is a progressive approach. We use coaching as it is encouraging, teaches something and builds accountability. A disciplinary approach is always counter productive
Documenting
As soon as the basic foundations are in place, the next step we do is to document the process we want everyone to follow. This way, we formalize coaching, outline our expectations and do not need to repeat everything every time. The approach is important
Problem solving at Uniquode
When we identify an issue, we first triangulate. How critical? What’s the real problem? Why do we have this on our table? What are we trying to solve?
We investigate the problem. We ask questions to make sure we and the client understands the general scope of the problem. This helps us to sidestep focusing that there is a major problem and instead break the problems down into solvable solutions, one by one.
We understand the impact of the problem, the areas affected and prioritize the urgent/stressful issues to get them out of the way. That way, we can rate the complexity, importance and systematize it.
We then develop multiple options to address the problem. Having two or three solutions helps us look at the pros and cons of each and amalgamate the solutions into one, if need be. We then agree on an approach, technology, deadline and ensure every stakeholder and team member is informed.
This approach may seem hard as it involves more initial study by multiple people at the same time on one issue. Instead of working solo on a problem, a collaborative style irons out all issues upfront. After all, reworking a solution is much harder than getting it right in the first place.
This approach has helped us at Uniquode. People’s trust in us solidified. Everyone follows the process now out of practice and finding solutions is more important than avoiding mistakes. Mistakes will be made. But we never dwell on them. Moving forward is the key
Changing the culture of a company is hard. They say that luck favours the brave. While it is best never to depend on luck, it is always good to be brave and propose solutions by stepping up. We create problem-solving systems to get the most out of our people.
We also encourage everyone to admit their faults by admitting them ourselves as an example. It is all about creating opportunities to learn. It is not about looking good all the time; it is about becoming a better person.