“If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions.”
So said Einstein.
Who apparently knew a thing or two about problem-solving.
When working with businesses, we often see complexificated (yep, I made that one up) solutions to relatively simple problems, because people didn’t spend enough time examining the problem and were too quick to jump to a conclusion and solution.
Like the people who came up with a myriad of complex and expensive fixes to the problem of birds pooping on the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC.
Continued cleaning of the monument using harsh cleaning products was damaging it.
Solutions were proposed, ranged from eliminating the birds through to encasing the monument in a plexiglass bubble!
Thankfully though, someone took some time to really examine the problem and came up with a super simple, inexpensive and from the bird’s point of view much better solution.
They discovered that the birds were hanging out at the memorial, because that’s where their favorite snack was hanging out – spiders. And the spiders were hanging out there because that’s where their favorite snack was hanging out – midges. And the midges were hanging out there because … well, they really liked the lighting that was being used to illuminate the memorial at dusk. Apparently, it got them in the mood for making lots of other midges!
So, the simple solution to the problem was to turn the lights on an hour later, after it had gone dark.
Consequently, the midges disappeared. And the birds moved on.
I wonder what elegantly simple solutions might be found to seemingly complex problems if you actively encouraged AND allowed everyone at every level in your organization to put time into examining a problem properly before jumping to a solution.