How you handle a problem

When you were most recently working on a problem, a conundrum or a tricky situation, how were you handling the problem? Were you talking about it? Say, sitting around a table with other people, just talking it through? Or were you ‘handling the problem’? Did you actually get your hands on the problem?

When we physically work with a problem, see, feel and imagine the pieces of it and move things around, we solve it quicker.

If we do, that means the l-o-n-g meetings we’re in (where we are usually just talking about the problem) will be finished sooner! We'll come up with better ideas and solutions and we generate a greater range of possibilities.

A product development team at a consumer goods business used cards with the key issues, challenges and obstacles written on them. They moved the cards around on the meeting table.

Seems simple, right? Engagement, participation and buy-in was boosted, and people more clearly understood what the details of the issue were all about.

Try not to just talk about the problem - but get your hands on it! You'll bring more people into the work to be done.