How To Solve A Problem: Part 2 - Reframing
Here’s a simple tool for solving your problems and tapping the hidden payload of career-advancing Outside Insights you’ve been ignoring your entire life. A powerful – yet ridiculously simple – strategy you can learn right now and implement tomorrow.
Key Point: Your problem (as you’re currently seeing it) is only part of a bigger picture.
For example, imagine you work in a department that’s crippled by office conflict, what’s the problem? Is it a single rude and argumentative employee, unacceptably high levels of work-related stress, or a failure of incompetent management? Are the employees screaming at each other because they’re frustrated by unrealistic productivity mandates, rampant technological change or inequitable executive compensation? Is it primarily a problem of morale, discipline or organizational culture?
If someone’s overweight, what’s their real problem? Do they eat too much because they’re greedy, clinically depressed or work in a candy factory? Do they find it hard to exercise because of low back pain or the distance they live from the gym? Or is it because ‘big bones’ runs in their family? Or is the real problem, that their overly large fat pad generates toxic chemicals that ages them prematurely?
That’s why, when you’re looking to solve a problem, it’s vital that you start by adopting a ‘big picture’ perspective. When you expand your outlook, you enclose important Outside Insights to a wonderful solution. I call this Perspective PowerTM strategy “Zooming Out”.
Solve A Problem By Zooming Out
Unfortunately, when facing a problem (rather than Zooming Out) you have a natural tendency to Zoom In. Ironically, the bigger the problem, the more you Zoom In. And, if you’re feeling anxious about the problem or working hard to solve it, these factors can narrow your point of view still further. And so, clueless, you overlook important Outside Insights to a progressively greater extent…This is why 99% of leaders completely blow it!
While everybody else scrambles and muddles along, here’s what savvy, streetwise executives do: Don't ever be afraid to embrace a broader perspective. When you feel pressured by a problem, overworked and overwhelmed, Zooming Out can feel like a waste of time, it’s not. Even in a crisis, always ask the question: What am I missing? Then, immediately Zoom Out and look for Outside Insights that are only visible on the big picture landscape. One way (of several) to Zoom Out and get a broader perspective on an important problem is to explore your higher-level needs…
Explore Your Higher-Level Needs
Here’s a super-effective way to look at a tough problem: As a barrier to meeting your higher level needs. These needs include, for example, a calm work environment, career advancement, a sense of balance between work and play, excitement, companionship, security, all the way up to our highest level needs success, happiness and fulfillment.
And so, one powerful way to Zoom Out is…
- Step 1. Identify the higher level needs that will be met when you solve your problem.
- Step 2. Reframe your problem around these higher-level needs.
- Step 3. Then, from this different vantage point, go on a hawk-eyed hunt for the Outside Insights to creative solutions.
Key Point: It’s easier to identify creative solutions when you focus on higher levels needs. Here are some simple questions to help you:
- Why is it important that I solve this problem, what higher-level needs will be met?
- Do I even need to solve this problem to meet these higher-level needs?
- Are there better ways to satisfy these higher-level needs?
A Problem Solving Example…
Prior to the earliest Mercury spaceflights, it was evident to NASA scientists (a crack team of expert problem solvers) that they needed to cover the space capsule with a material able to withstand the 3000°F heat of atmospheric reentry.
The problem statement the NASA scientists would have written down would be something like: “The problem is to find a material suitable for covering the space capsule that would hold up to a temperature of 3000°F.”
This statement became the definition of the problem. And so the scientists tried to identify such a material…without even a hint of success.
At some point, one of the NASA team Zoomed Out, had a brilliant insight and rewrote the problem statement something like: “The higher-level need associated with this problem is to keep the returning astronauts cool despite the 3000°F temperature associated with reentry .”
After Zooming Out and reframing their problem around this higher-level need (keep the astronauts cool at all costs) a solution emerged—the ablative heat shield. During atmospheric reentry, the ablative heat shield melted and fell away from the spacecraft, dissipating heat and mitigating the extreme temperatures encountered inside the reentry corridor.
This solution proved to be a slam-dunk. All the Mercury and Gemini capsules and the Apollo Command Modules were protected in this fashion. (A different, reusable, thermal protection system is used on the space shuttle. Sadly, as evidenced by the Columbia disaster, it has not proved to be as reliable as the ablative heat shield.)
There are many other Perspective PowerTM strategies (like Zooming Out) for reframing your problem from multiple points of view. So—like the NASA scientists—you can shortcut the problem-solving process…saving you time, money and frustration.
However, for now, let’s proceed to the next problem-solving step…
