Look at your problem from the other side
ALSO LOOK AT THE PROBLEM FROM THE OTHER SIDE
What do you do when things are not going well in the team, the turnover target just isn't being reached or the number of complaints just isn't decreasing? What do you do - in other words - when you encounter a problem? Chances are you look for the causes of the problem. And that is not surprising. We have been brought up with the idea that properly analysing and understanding a problem is necessary to arrive at a good solution. We ask why five times and search for root causes. This often presents the image of a flat tyre. You can focus on the immediate problem, and fix the tyre, but with this you have not solved the deeper cause, glass on the road. No need to put a pin in it, of course.
But are our difficult problems really like this? Can I discover through very long study why things just don't work out in the team, and from there simply solve the problem? An appealing idea but we know from experience that this is often not how it works. Many such problems are complex. There are many factors at play and they also interact. As a result, it is very difficult to predict the effect of changing any of the variables. With this kind of problem, it is an illusion that you can discover and remove the cause. This way of working may even worsen the problem as people become discouraged about the possibility of improving the situation due to the large number of causes.
PROGRESSION-ORIENTED WORK
But how do you tackle this kind of problem? An alternative has been developed within psychology, the progression-based approach. The core of this - scientifically based - method is that there is no single way to solve a problem. The challenge is mainly to get people to discover and try out solutions. For people familiar with Agile and scrum, this should be music to their ears. Seen this way, solving a problem is more about motivation than smart diagnosis.
But what can you do to encourage people to try things out? Research from. Amabile shows that achieving progression on meaningful goals is one of the key drivers of motivation. How does this translate to, say, that team problem?
Developed by Coert Visser, the tilting nicely shows the difference between the diagnostic approach and that of the progression-based method. Given the current situation (problems in the team), the diagnostic model would try to reason back to the beginning of the problem in order to avoid the dreaded situation.
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