Key points from this chapterYou’re now ready to define the problem. There are four problems that can now come up in accurately defining the problem:
1. Being too far from the problem.
2. Being too familiar with the problem.
3. Being too close to the problem.
4. Misstating the problem.
Being too far from the problem
First, you’re too far from the problem to see it clearly. India’s leaders saw the solution to all their economic problems as the need to industrialize the nation. Gandhi was much closer to the people in the countryside. He correctly saw the solution as teaching his people to be self sufficient in food production.
Barack Obama was frequently accused of spending too much time taking care of international problems, and not being close enough to the economic problems at home.
One of the most remarkably successful businesspeople of the 20th century, Armand Hammer of Occidental Petroleum, credited much of his success to his willingness to travel. His corporate jet was always standing by, ready to take him to face-to-face meetings anywhere in the world.
Being too far from the problem is at the heart of most employee problems. The grunt on the front line complains that the generals at HQ don’t understand what they’re up against: “Why don’t they come down here, and see for themselves?” The assembly worker complains, “Management doesn’t know what it’s like down here.”
Be sure you’re close enough to the problem to know what’s really going on. Don’t wait until the peasants are storming the palace gates to find out that they aren’t thrilled with the way you’re running your empire!
Being too familiar with the problem
The second problem is you’re too familiar with the problem. Try this exercise. Without looking at your watch, can you describe the face? Does it have numbers or strokes or diamonds? Does it have a second hand? Most of us can’t say. We look at our watch a dozen times a day, but never actually see it.
That’s why someone can be married to an alcoholic for years, and not realize that his or her spouse was sick. When friends finally confront him with the problem, he’s amazed to find out that he was the last to know. He was simply too familiar with the problem, to be able to see it in perspective.
Frequently a mother of a special needs child has to be told by an outsider that something is wrong, because the mother is simply too familiar with the child to see the problem.
Business leaders tend to make broad assumptions about the way things are done in their industry. When I became president of a large real estate company, I was relatively new to the industry. Everybody told me to expect a 20 percent fall-out ratio, which means that only 80 percent of the contracts signed will ever close. You lose 20 percent because the buyers can’t get the financing, or they have a falling out with the seller, or a problem with title or zoning. To our company, this would mean that more than $100 million in sales was falling through the cracks each year. To an outsider like me, it seemed obvious that the easiest sale to make would be the one we would otherwise lose. What could we do to reduce fallouts? “You’re wasting your time, Roger,” I was told. “That’s just the way it is in our industry.” In fact, there was a lot we could do. By teaching negotiating skills to our people, I was able to dramatically reduce the amount of lost business.
Being too close to the problem
The third problem is you’re too close to the problem. See if you can solve this problem.
Draw a straight line that goes through
New York, Dallas, and San Francisco.
It’s a difficult problem to solve because you’re so close it. In your mind you automatically see a map of the United States. You see New York in the East, and then you see Dallas down South, and San Francisco over in the West. You automatically say, “You can’t draw a straight line that goes through those three.” Yet, I can add another condition to that problem, and you probably can solve it immediately. Let me rephrase the question: I want you to draw a straight line that goes through these three cities in this order. First New York, then San Francisco and then Dallas. That makes it easy doesn’t it? You realize all you have to do is draw a line around the globe.
Another example of being too close to the problem was the development of BART, the subway system in the San Francisco Bay Area. The planners set out to solve the Bay Area’s traffic problems. However, they got so absorbed with building a technologically brilliant system that they lost sight of the objective. The result is a technologically perfect system, touted as the quietist transit system in the country, that too few people want to ride.
We’re about to repeat the problem in the central valley of California, where we’re going to spend $3.5 billion building a high-speed train from Bakersfield to Fresno, 100 miles north. I lived in Bakersfield for three and a half miserable years. I understand the need to get out of there fast to escape the 110 degrees at midnight heat in the summer and the stranglehold tule fog in the winter, but nobody is going to want to ride a high-speed train to Fresno, because they would prefer to get into their pickup truck and tune the radio to Buck Owens.
What the planners need to do is solve the transportation of the public, not create an engineering masterpiece.
Misstating the problem
The fourth problem with defining is misstating the problem. Should I marry this person? is different from Should I marry? And again, it’s completely different from Should I live with and have children with this person?
We went to war with Iraq because we thought the problem was assuring a continuous supply of Middle East oil. That was attacking the symptoms of the problem instead of attacking the problem itself. The problem is our dependency on foreign oil.
In the preceding chapters, I’ve taught you how to define the problem accurately so you can get a clear picture of the decision you’re facing. Good problem solvers agree with James Thurber that it’s much better to know some of the right questions, than to think you know all of the right answers.
Key points from this chapterThere are four difficulties with accurately defining the problem:
Being too far from the problem.
Being too familiar with the problem.
Being too close to the problem.
Misstating the problem.