Do you ever get to your desk to start your workday, look through your emails and communications with your team, and think to yourself, “Ugh! Another fire I have to put out!”? You immediately jump to troubleshooting or finding a solution, get yourself and your team out of the woods, only for the same issue to occur a few weeks later. If this has happened to you, you’re not alone.

First of all, don’t beat yourself up! You’re only human, after all.

Secondly, there is a remedy to this sentiment—one that is actually more sustainable. Much like when you take Tylenol for a headache but the headaches keep recurring because you are only treating the symptoms instead of the root causes of the headache, the same thing happens when you just treat the symptoms rather than the root causes of your organizational problems.

This new remedy is called structured problem solving, and it is guaranteed to make a difference for you as a leader, for your team members, and for your organizational goals.

What Is Structured Problem-Solving?

It is a disciplined and collaborative approach to addressing and effectively fixing issues. Rather than working through a problem alone, you engage your whole team in the process—capitalizing on the innate dynamism within your organization. Furthermore, structured problem-solving is not a quick-and-easy fix. Likely you will need to have multiple meetings with your team to fully dissect the issue and ideate solutions. Best practices suggest one meeting focused on understanding the problem and one meeting focused on solutions and implementation.

Throughout the structured problem-solving process, your team might be tempted to blurt out suggestions for solutions. While this is understandable and demonstrates enthusiasm, you will want to remind everyone to be patient and work through the process, which I’ve outline below, in its entirety before thinking about solutions. By jumping straight to problem-solving, everyone misses out on opportunities to discuss the issue in full detail, understand its core, and to create innovative solutions that will benefit your business over the long term.

How to Apply Structured Problem Solving

1. Define the Problem

Start by engaging your entire team to understand the issues they are experiencing on a day-to-day basis. Focus on one problem at a time. I suggest starting with the issue that is having the most impact on your business.

2. Formulate a Problem Statement

Next, work together to draft a problem statement. According to MIT’s associate dean of leadership and special projects, Nelson P. Repenning, problem statement formulation is “the single most underrated skill in all of management practice.” This is because most times, our brains naturally skip our conscious (analytical and deliberate) thinking processing and instead leaps to our unconscious (automatic and fast) solution mode processing. To clearly understand “What problem are we trying to solve?”, the 80 words problem statement should:

1. Reference something the organization cares about and connect it to a clear and specific goal.
2. Have a clear articulation of the gap between the current state and the goal.
3. Include key variables that are quantifiable (current state, target state and gap percentage).
4. Be as neutral as possible, and without presenting possible diagnosis or solutions.
5. Be small enough in scope that it can be tackled quickly (within 60 days).

3. Describe the Background

The next step is to describe the background behind the problem. What is the significance of the issue or item you are trying to address? Why does it matter to the work you do? This can start off as a brainstorm dump or bulleted list, which can then be crafted into an eloquent background summary. The idea here is to communicate as much as you can about the importance of the problem and why it needs to be solved.

4. Outline the Current Design

Observe the person(s) responsible for doing the work, collect supplementary information such as data or reports, and describe the current process for this particular issue. This could take the form of a step-by-step list, diagrams, graphs, or a process map—whatever most effectively communicates the process. Make sure to talk to the staff directly involved to ensure you have all of the facts to properly investigate.

5. Perform a Root Cause Analysis

This is where the collaboration gets especially fun, in my opinion. There are several root cause analysis tools you can use, but I particularly like the “5 Why Analysis” technique due to its interrogative fashion (it makes me feel like a business doctor). Starting with the problem, think about the most immediate reason why it exists. For example, “The problem is happening because of (Reason 1).” Repeat this step for Reason 2. “Reason 2 is occurring because of Reason 3.” Keep going until you have identified the root cause. This will typically take five rounds. This part of the activity is analogous to peeling all the layers of an onion until you get to the middle. One of our team members described it as like being in therapy, tracing current behavioral patterns back to childhood experiences. It’s a powerful tool!

6. Create a Target Design

Out with the old, in with the new! Now that you’ve identified the root cause(s) behind your problem, you can create an ideal state that clearly outlines the solution. The target process should include your improvement goal and leadership guidelines to eliminate deviation.

7. Execute.

Congratulations on solving the problem! Match each item from the outline above with a task, team member, and due date to fully implement the new process. You will also want to include target results for each team member, and a section to track those results.

8. Reflect.

Once you’ve implemented the new process and observed the results, regroup to reflect on how it’s working. How well have the actual results matched up to the target results? What have we learned in the problem-solving process? Where do we go from here?

Team Above All

In leadership, it is all too easy to find ourselves far removed from the experiences of our most valuable asset: our team. By including them in the decision-making process, you get a better understanding of their strengths and weaknesses, how they are performing in their roles, how they think and approach problems, how their talent can be better utilized, and what they are going through on a daily basis.

Feeling included and listened to are core human needs, and this rings especially true within an organization where many people spend most of their time. When team members feel that leadership cares about their opinions and believes that they have valuable contributions, they feel better about coming to work. This improved understanding of their experiences can, in turn, help you modify your leadership style if necessary, and set you apart from other boring jobs where, instead, your organization will be known for fostering an ongoing learning environment where everyone is always excited to solve the next problem. Be fun, be different, be amazing!

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