Organisations are problem solving systems
Everyone, at any moment, is doing something that is aimed at making progress (be it creating knowledge or executing knowledge to solve a problem)
You now have options for organising problem solving
Option 1: The role in the hierarchy determines the problem you are expected to solve
There is a specific one-on-one link between who should solve the problem and the kind of problem that is solved
Option 2: Distributed problem solving - no one-on-one link between between who solves the problem and the kind of problem
It’s impossible to separate problems into the exact domain of responsibility of every separate individual
Problems have dependencies with other people’s domain of responsibility
So far so good, then we just create combined teams ?
Another problem: it’s not by combining people into teams that they will also consider this a combined problem and certainly not a combined solution
Consequence: they’ll get stuck. They cannot just add their respective solutions on top of each other. There will be new problems when you do this … problems of inconsistencies, costs that are too high, inefficiencies …
So you need to work on those tradeoffs
But that is typically not done … we escalate or we give in
We let them have it … or we let the people above uw decided
So the real problem of option 1 is that the problem is NOT solved anymore in cooperation
So that we may miss crucial knowledge from one of the 2 parties in the solution
So that we may miss important knowledge if the decisions are made at higher levels where there is less information to make that decision, and less time to make the decision
So how does problem distribution work?
Define a relevant problem & team that will need to create more cooperation to solve it
Start a specific process … to keep the problem solving optimal and at the same place
Avoiding that the problem gets solved elsewhere or without the relevant contribution of every party in the solution
Managing optimum knowledge growth and cooperation to do so
Drivers: communication, autonomy, transparency, flow and group flow
What are the obstacles for it to work well ?
Problems can be taken away from those teams and solved elsewhere
Timing may be too short for optimum knowledge growth to kick in
No facilitation in the teams when it’s need for more balanced and aligned knowledge creation
Pactify has a specific approach for "distributed problem solving"
A platform
A single one
With transparency on problems, how they relate to each other and what solutions are being developed for them
A process with a facilitator
A hierarchy that is willing to use power to keep the process going and not stop somewhere half way
… willing to “keep the problem solving down into the organisation”
For more info, please visit: www.pactifymanagement.com
