Understanding the Problem Before You Decide on the Solution

UNDERSTANDING THE PROBLEM
BEFORE
YOU DECIDE ON THE SOLUTION

Solving problems is at the core of all organizational behavior. I have heard many times:“If it wasn’t for Problems, I wouldn’t be needed.” Management is all about problem solving; so where do we start? Problem solving requires several basic processes:
– A group needs to have some practical wisdom which looks at issues with enough experience and applied understanding of the factors that will be impacted, as solutions become understood.
– A group needs to have a passion for clarity, and making sure that solutions are actually possible to solve the problem at hand.
Being relentless at defining the problem and understanding “Why this has become the problem” is 50% of finding solutions. Two stories come to mind as examples of this process.

Changing the Bon Marche Service Culture:
The Bon was trying to reposition itself – having been founded on Value in the late 1800’s, the company had a long history and owned this segment of the retail market. Throughout the late 1960’s, this was a good position to be in, but the world was changing and this position was losing ground to the growing middle class, and to consumers who were no longer only focused on Value. We were now looking for Style and Fashion.
The problem was clear – we had to change to a different market position.
This transformation required a total rethinking: merchandise, visual display, classification adjacencies, marketing, and customer service. We needed to find new solutions to make this market position change.
I was in charge of the customer service element, and also the marketing component. This is where I first learned about the concept that behaviors were more important than attitudes. As I mention in my attitudes vs. behaviors blog posts, we were doing mystery shopper reports in each of the 40+ stores, but the reports were not changing behaviors of the customer service associates. The associates viewed the reports as management punishment effort, not as a helping tool to understand our level of service.
The problem was clear – we needed to have a service culture and people’s attitudes became the issue – it was the “Why” we were doing these reports that was not understood. The solution was coming from the top layer of management, but it was not owned by the people doing the service.
I asked for 5000 labor hours, and had each employee of the company do our mystery shopper report on a competitor of their choice. It only took a couple of weeks for the entire organization to not only understand the service concept, but also to become prideful about our new service standard. The Problem was a defined corporate problem, but the solution was to transfer the ownership of service to the people. We knew the problem but we missed the “Why” the problem existed – the problem existed because the people did not own the answer, and until we empowered them to own the answer we could not make our solution work.

The Sheriff’s 911 Call Center:
I was asked to help figure out why the Sheriff’s King County 911 Call Center had such high turnover. 911 employee turnover is very expensive – it takes over a year to hire, train, mentor, and certify that a new call receiver can work without supervision. You can imagine how all this time adds up. The effort again was driven by defining the problem and understanding why it was the problem.
After interviewing the entire workforce through individual conversation and group meetings, the conversations always went to certain individuals that bullied other employees. One Call Receiver told the story that if she had to transfer information to the dispatcher working the South part of King County, that the package of information had to be different from how the information was packaged to the North dispatcher. I regularly heard the words “I wasn’t trained that way.” The problem became very clear – the way people were trained was different, depending upon “When” you were trained and “Who” trained you. Managers, trainers and mentors all had differences approaches to answering calls, the packaging of information, and intensity of the problem.
All of this was in a performance environment where, with a high priority call, the call-receiver had 10 seconds to answer the call, and then 40 seconds to determine the level of danger and package the information to the dispatcher, so the dispatcher could send the appropriate law enforcement officers – Lots of urgency and high levels of stress. All said, this dynamic created a level of turnover that was making things worse. The problem was clear – we needed to establish a more standardized approach to each of the 5 communication interactions involved – with the most important being: “The Caller to the Call Receiver, and The Call Receiver to the Dispatcher”.

“Why” was this happening? The answer was in the way that Call Receivers were being judged for their performance – how they were graded and reviewed. The call center used a Quality Assurance Audit, where the shift managers would listen to a recorded interaction of a call receiver and a caller, and give the grades based upon 15 Yes or No questions. One of the questions was: “Answered the call correctly?” while another was “Managed the call correctly?” The 1st question involved saying the scripted opening line when a call came in; the second question was more about the Art of 911 Call Receiving. This QA Audit was “Why” there was high turnover – Yes or No is easy for the 1st question of “Correctly” – But the issue of the Art of the handling the call is not a black and white answer – How you handle a car accident is one thing – How you handle a Domestic Violence call is much different.

I rewrote the Quality Assurance Audit and created two different scales of answers. There were six Yes and NO questions, and eight 1 – 5 questions (1 being very poor and 5 being very good). I then had the 26 people that either trained, mentored, or managed the Call Receivers listen to the same 2 phone calls. The first being a car accident and the second being a Domestic Violence Call. I am sure you can guess what happened: almost everyone judged the Yes/No questions the same, but here was total disagreement when it came to the scoring of the 1-5 questions. The lack of consistency in how people were trained and reviewed caused high turnover, and until they all could see it was “Their Problem”, they could just blame the people with the bad attitudes.

Organizational culture is based upon ownership of individual behaviors and processes that everyone supports. Using the line: “This is the Way We Do Things Around Here” better be clear to all stakeholders, not just a few. Always “Define” the problem, and always understand “Why” the problem exists, before you try a solution.