Article 4: Solving Critical Problems with Communication

Andrew Herrington
Pateo Consulting
www.pateo.com
(519) 635-5308
Outline:

Situation: Your business has a critical problem - a development project is off the rails, you need to get it onto a new track, fast. The development team cannot identify an acceptable solution to the problem. The approaches that you have considered (rebuilding the team, selective people replacement, re-vectoring the product, following a new direction advocated by a few team members) are all too time consuming or are unacceptable for some other reason.

This article describes a broadly applicable, communication intensive, problem solving approach that is usable within any of the widely varying management styles of high-tech, knowledge-worker businesses. The facilitative, schedule-driven methodology described is fast and keeps a functioning, though temporarily defeated, team in-place and working; properly applied the approach can re-energize the team, minimizing project delays.

Typical situations in which the communication approach might be applied:

- partially completed project becoming significantly delayed
- newly identified significant technical challenges
- unavoidable changes in key people on a team that leave the team rudderless or feeling that it has inadequate knowledge
- project requirements that have proven to be ill-defined
- externally changed project requirements
- gradual shifting of business direction and/or assumptions as a project has proceeded
- changed business priorities
- new resource limitations
- recognition that the project risk and business outcome expectations have become unbalanced - that is unacceptable to the businesses current direction

Basis for Approach: The basis for the approach is:

(1) The use of a Problem Solver from outside the business.
Reason: An outside Problem Solver has no interest in assigning blame because he comes into the situation, facilitates finding the problem solution and leaves....and the team knows this is going to happen from the beginning. The team knows it can be open (and attitudinally vulnerable to expose critical information) to such a person.
(2) The use of a Problem Solver who is not a narrow expert in any of the areas of technical or business knowledge used in the project but instead has expertise in inter-personal and inter-group communication. The Problem Solver should have experience with the basic technologies and common business practices used in the high tech industry.
Reason: To ensure that problem solution responsibility lies with the existing team; no individual on the team is threatened by outside expertise confined to communication and problem solving.
(3) The Problem Solver maintains an active disinterest in learning any of the specialist knowledge involved - except that he may be prepared to learn sufficient of narrow areas to facilitate communicate between specializations.
Reason: As in (1).
(4) The Problem Solver specifically does not want to supply the team members with a solution.
Reason: Existing team members are better placed to find solutions that they have confidence in and can support enthusiastically after the Problem Solver has left the scene.
(5) The Problem Solver works from a belief that the challenge of the problem must be solved by the team of people involved.
Reason: To rebuild the confidence of individuals and the team.
(6) The Problem Solver acts from a belief that the team members are to be trusted.
Reason: Recognition of the businesses dependence on its employees is central to leading and managing effectively in the best interest of the business.
(7) The Problem Solver acts from a belief that knowledge workers are motivated (i) by the technical and business issues at hand - which they know as independent professionals - and (ii) by their own personal career and satisfaction obtaining interests - the reasons why they are working for this particular business.
Reason: These factors largely define Knowledge Worker businesses as such and hence lead to the Problem Solvers choice of a approach.

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Nature of the Problem. The working assumption is that the team and managers involved with the troubled project have identified the problem and have offered solutions that are not acceptable or available for any of a variety of reasons - the definition of a project "off-the-rails". The standard solutions have been worked through (see this link to ChacoCanyon Consulting for an excellent summary); the problem appears insoluble to all those involved. Most often the team is, however, still motivated and is only temporarily defeated - it is asking for help. My experience indicates that, often, hidden communication frustrations, erroneous assumptions and misunderstandings lie beneath the apparent lack of solutions, together with a kind of fatigue or disappointment that arises from the teams inability to solve the problem. Additionally, whilst the original project might have been conceived in a systematic or holistic way, this essential nature might well have been unintentionally lost along the way creating the problem insidiously.

What has to be done ?

Step 1: Assignment of a Problem Solver with responsibility for facilitating finding a problem solution.
The Problem Solvers key skills are:

- the ability to ask direct questions in a constructive and sensitive manner
- to be able listen very carefully
- to have a highly pro-active, schedule driven, facilitative approach
- to have the attitude of a detective to identify inconsistencies
- to be able to lead and manage meetings
- to have a generally informed background of the business

The Problem Solvers responsibilities are:

(a) To get a solution to the problem even if some personalities are temporarily bruised
(b) To preserve as much of the team as a working entity
(c) To preserve the self-confidence of individuals
(d) To be highly diplomatic by using a variety of strategies to de-personalize blame and defocus self-blame from those apparently responsible - untoward circumstances, new business focus, communication problems, critical need for results, unexpectedly challenging nature of the product....
(e) To encourage the people in the team to be vulnerable in a taut situation. Often people know that there were errors that they made that will be identified during the process of finding solutions. It has to be made clear that these errors were caused by risks accepted by these people that have now eventuated or come true. This is what happens sometimes if risks are taken; without risks there cannot be progress. So risk takers must be accepted and encouraged and their data welcomed.
(f) To identify specific factors that could prevent the team from successfully delivering even if a solution to the current problem is found. These factors could be resource, personal, environmental, managerial...

Step 2: Development of Problem, Impact and Outcome Statements.

These statements are all written from the overall businesses viewpoint by the problem solver with most of the inputs coming from senior executives. This information describes the apparent situation of the project relative to the businesses current requirements for that project. It is critical that these statements are agreed by whoever ('executive management') is responsible for achieving success for the business from the viewpoint of shareholders. This can be the President, owner, executive team or other individual - depending upon how the business is organized. The statements should contain no element of blame or attribution of cause. The purpose of the statements is to establish an agreed position following the usual 'muddying of the waters' that occurs as problems build up and become recognized.

The Problem Statement contains a clear summary of the symptoms of the problem.
The Impact Statement should outline the effects of not solving the problem on the businesses success, including relative size of the impacts to the business as a whole. This can help to scale the size of the response to the problem; it also provides the problem solver with appropriate leverage within the organization.
The Outcome Statement describes a range of possible, acceptable, outcomes. The intent is for the envelope of possible acceptable outcomes to be fully described. This defines the flexibilities that the Problem Solver can call upon in finding a solution and is intended to reflect a entirely realistic appraisal given the current situation. This statement may be subject to re-negotiation depending upon information discovered in the Problem Solving process.
The content of the statement can include a wide variety of variables such as:

- acceptable trade-offs between schedule and performance
- statement of the amount of risk that is acceptable, with a definition of what risk means to the businesses management
- indications possible narrowing of the target specifications to meet the needs of particular groups of customers
- possibility of staged (sequenced) delivery of aspects of the specification or product
- possibility of accepting short term compromises in product performance
- possibility of accepting temporary reductions in the usual quality of the product
- possibility of breaking the product into sub-products

The Outcome Statement provide the business management with the opportunity to imaginatively explore possibilities given the businesses current circumstances.

Step 3: The Problem Solver then calls a meeting with everybody involved in the project, following a brief meeting with the existing team managers to describe the process to be followed. The Problem Statement, Impact Statement and Outcome Statement are presented to the meeting. The Problem Solver has immediately to establish the projects future path and to make a statement about the role of the people involved, including the various technical and project leaders.
The basic elements of the future direction are:

- the role of the Problem Solver - to facilitate the team in finding a solution; role of the whole team - to help the Problem Solver make communication happen. The Problem Solver is not interested in finding fault, only in finding a solution. The Problem Solver encourages the team to setup learning post-mortems at some point in the future.
- that the will be a period of chaos during which many aspects of the project may longer fit well together
- the project continues with the same people and that these people will find solutions to the problem with the aid of the Problem Solver. For those not immediately involved with areas impacted by the problem work continues as before.
- that the Problem Solver will immediately define various groupings to discuss, understand and clarify the three statements. These groupings may include guest (non-team members) whose function is to deviate the groups thinking from previous paths by introducing new information. These guests may be employees or people with specialized knowledge.
- that the Problem Solver will be taking steps that are designed to produce information flows to himself and to everybody involved and that these information flows are the most critical next steps - that is they will displace other ongoing work of the project as needed.
- that in general the Problem Solver will promote discussions that follow the rules of brainstorming - summarized at the end of the article - or other ideation strategies. This is a critical aspect of the Problem Solver facilitating role.
- that the Problem Solver will require all information to be presented to and discussed, as far as possible, by everybody involved. The Problem Solver still reserves the right to have one on ones; one to few; one to all meetings as he feels necessary.
- the Problem Solver attempts to diffuse the pressures felt by the team leaders that result from their apparent failure.
This is done by:

- indicating that many projects experience problems due to communication weaknesses, within the team and to and from the team.
- that usually few team members are trained in communications yet teams are really all about communications
- indicating that the team leaders will not change because the business is concerned with delivery of the product and not finger pointing
- indicating that the business is aware that there is more to be learned from tough projects with problems that become successful than projects that have an easy time
- by having a prior meeting with the team leaders and senior managers to explain the process to be followed

Step 4: Work of the Problem Solver. The Problem Solver has a number of objectives - all of which must be discussed with the team members.
These are:

- to quickly shift the focus of work from achieving milestones to promoting intra-team communication in the context of the Problem Statement, Problem Impact Statement and Outcome Statement.
- to create a positive atmosphere of forward movement using the optimism that flows from the Outcome Statement, which indicates the businesses ongoing interest in the project and the businesses flexibilities. To promote an atmosphere of urgency and excitement.
- to have fresh (i.e. different sets of people) groupings of people discuss the problem; this shifts some of the responsibility from those seen to be 'caught in the headlight' to a broader group to redefine the issues they are wrestling with.
- to promote public communication - a situation in which everybody has a right to know everything and to hear everything discussed. In particular the purpose is to review all the assumptions of the differing knowledge domains that flow across knowledge domain boundaries within the existing team. Too often there is miscommunication about limitations that originate from colleagues with other specialties, since by definition specialty means that information and understanding is not shared by all. Frequently a re-partitioning of responsibility across the domains can yield a solution that was hidden by the original responsibility partitioning.
- to identify all possible new sources of relevant information, from inside and outside the business.
- to identify 'blocks' in perception of information or approach caused by strongly held personal or team opinions regarding technology or customer or management or personalities or history or other factor.
- to start work on identifying the Pivotal Limitations - the parameters or characteristics or problems that are making the project fail to succeed. It is critical that these limitations are identified and discussed by everybody and agreed to and understood by the leaders in the different knowledge domains that are involved. The central point is to plug-in the Outcome Statement to peoples thinking and to connect the Pivotal Limitations to what might be achieved by a relaxation in performance or schedule or deliverable.
- to identify specific investigations that are intended to clarify unknowns. These investigations can be obtaining information, carrying out technical experiments, looking for outside sources of resources or components, investigating specific aspects of competitors performance or obtaining customers views on the need for critical aspects of the products performance. The Impact and Outcome Statements can indicate the available flexibilities.
- to use the techniques of brainstorming and ideation to get past the limitations that have prevented the team from finding solutions.


Problems Solvers Personal Responsibilities. The Problem Solver continually watches for consistencies and inconsistencies in the discussions and other information flows. He carefully points these positions out to individuals and sub-groups of the team. He continually presses for different interpretations from different team members, questions assumptions, asks why things are impossible, asks team members for the reasons behind their statements, asks people to re-state problems in various different ways and in different media. He will mix different groups of people, bring in others etc - all the time listening and questioning. He will ask highly critical questions in one-on-ones and then use the data obtained to re-focus questions on other individuals and groups. He will question all limitations and assumptions based on team members views of the companies internal and external environment, and on such areas as the capabilities of sub-contractors and suppliers, information from suppliers and software vendors etc. Often these styles of obtaining and examining information will prompt team members to start following similar patterns of behavior and this will sometimes lead to a solution. He will also be looking for factors that prevent the team from being successful in the future.

Step 5: Rapid Forward Movement. Once this pattern of work is established an atmosphere of rapid forward movement can quickly develop. The work of the Problem Solver then enters a critical phase. The Problem Solver has to make a judgment of the likelihood of developing an acceptable solution from the process, in order to maintain the confidence of the businesses leaders. Usually this judgment is necessary before a clear solution that meets the requirement of the Outcome Statement has emerged. In this the Problem Solver can be guided by publicly questioning the team members. Have they found surprising new information ? Have some important erroneous assumptions been identified ? Does the Outcome Statement have flexibilities that team members had not identified ? Is there any measure of agreement on these points ?

Step 6: Discussions with Management. Following further discussions with executive management and their appraisal of the situation the Problem Solver can now call a pivotal meeting that is intended to narrow the work of the team down to the pursuit of a limited number of promising directions. This meeting should define what is to be done, identify time-scales, possible outcomes and risks, and perform a match to the Outcome Statement. The Problem Solver should then draft a Situation Description Statement that describes a proposed new direction, together with a detailed analysis of project impacts and anticipated risks. It is central that this statement be agreed and committed to by all team members, because implementing the re-vectored project to success is their responsibility.

Step 7: The New Project Plan has to be accepted by executive management.

Key Points about this Problem Solving Process:

a) The Problem Solver does not take over project leadership. He facilitates directed communication between team members (and whoever else the team identifies) in the problem context.
b) The problem solving process is basically designed to unearth information already held by the project team in the light of the Problem Statement, Impact Statement and Outcome Statement. These three statements provide a focused new circumstance for the project by forcing executive management to carry out new situation appraisal that incorporates all the environmental changes that have impacted the business since the projects inception.
c) The process forces new communication situations by mixing the project team in fresh ways and by actively facilitating fresh thinking
d) The process should not be particularly time consuming
e) The original team stays in place. No attempt is made to assign blame. Executive management is seen to provide the flexibility needed to find a solution, and this, together with the communications pause in project work, provides an opportunity for the team leaders to retain credibility.
f) Central is that the Problem Solver facilitates the finding of a solution by providing superior communication skills - the ability to question gently and persistently in front of others who can spot opportunities, to promote Vital Discussion, to manage information flows, to focus meetings, to look for unexpected responses from team members as information is discussed, to make the process work, to look for inconsistencies and to be prepared to ask 'the stupid question' about assumptions. Team members always provide the knowledge that they provided at the projects inception and for which they were hired.
g) What happens to the existing Project leaders, Project Managers and Program Managers ? It is essential that these people stay on board, involved, because they are likely continue to have ongoing responsibility for the project. It is hard to avoid the view that these people have failed. Yet if the Problem Solver - Facilitator can find a solution without bringing in special knowledge then the failure is one of communication, because the team always had the latent solution.
Such a failure can be reasonably attributed to inadequate training - usually a failure of the business. Usually these people are highly technical (in the case of Project Leaders), specialist (Project Managers, who monitor and record progress after setting up the original schedule) or have a diverse set of over-viewing and information gathering responsibilities in the case of Program Managers. None are usually trained in inter-personal or inter-group communication skills. All are usually responsible to other more senior managers with limited time and technical understanding of the product; all probably lack senior experience so they are probably unused to watching for early signs of problems; all usually suffer from being 'too close' to the project.
It is a critical part of the Problem Solvers responsibilities to keep these people motivated. Obviously the Problem Solver cannot prevent the organization from taking a view of team members after the problem is solved - but because the Problem Solver is known to have only a short term responsibility and is not technically able to criticize the team this effect should be reduced.

Summary: The article describes how a communication based approach to problem solving can be used to identify the solution to a significant problem by exploiting latent knowledge within a team. The approach is conservative - it focuses on keeping the team together and it minimizes the introduction of new knowledge into an ongoing situation. It requires management to agree to a snapshot of the situation and to describe the envelope of possible outcomes. A facilitated period of communication is set-up by the Problem Solver to produce new flows of information throughout the team. The communication is facilitated and observed by a Problem Solver whose objective is to ensure that the information is as widely spread as possible, and is as widely discussed as possible. The Problem Solver encourages the team to constantly look for inconsistencies. The underlying rationale behind the approach is that the combination of information in the situation snapshot, uncovered inconsistencies and new ideas stimulated by discussion together with managing the flow of information into the team will lead to a conservative, efficient, focused and practical problem solution. The Problem Solver carefully manages the overall situation to obtain a solution as quickly and conservatively as possible.

© Copyright 1999-2010 Andrew Herrington Pateo Consulting

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