The Two Problems of Problem-Solving

The Two Problems of Problem-Solving
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Bill Cottringer

If I had only one hour to save the world, I would spend fifty-five minutes defining the problem, and only five minutes finding the solution. ~Albert Einstein.

All the problems we are challenged to solve arise from three main conflicts with which we are all confronted These three universal conflicts are: Us vs. life (adapting to the way of life), us vs. others (relative to interpersonal interactions), and us vs. ourselves (intrapersonal reconciliation of the terrible twins within--free will and destiny). Now there are two main problems with our normal problem-solving approach:

1. As Dr. Einstein hinted above, we don’t spend enough time looking for the core problem, apart from focusing too much on solving the surface symptoms. Most ornery problems we fail to solve linger because we are not digging deep enough to discover the real why of the problem. A regressive series of 4-5 “why” questions is often the only path to the core problem.

Take employee turnover in a business or government organization for example. The real cause of the turnover could be something the employer was or wasn’t doing or something the employee wasn’t getting. Or, more likely there were a litany of other influences bringing about the high turnover rate, from a difficult economic climate, a shift between employer and employee needs and rights, or just the type of business the organization is doing or even how they are doing it.

In another example, medical issues could be caused by physical illness, psychological stress, pharmaceutical drug confluence, or a mixture above. Or it could be simply genetics or something from the environment. Next, consider all the possible contributing factors to a crime:

• The who, what, when where, why and how of the situation.
• The interpersonal and communication skills of the parties.
• The levels of mental, emotional and social intelligence of all involved.
• The abilities to employ mindfulness to be fully aware of what is going on in the environment and at the moment, without mind wandering back to past memories or future expectations.
• Any relevant historical baggage being brought to the situation.
• Past experience with similar situations and the abilities to make intuitive decisions quickly.
• Information processing, thinking styles and personalities of the involved parties.
• Interfering influences such as intoxication, substance abuse, physical disability or mental illness.
• The extent of the opportunity at hand or probability of getting caught.
• The strength of expectations of desired methods and outcomes of all those involved.
• Past experience with successful or failed conflict resolution strategies.
• A collection of relevant cultural, age, ethnic, religious, gender, timing, or socio-economic influences.

2. Now the next problem is a little more esoteric to understand, but it may be a leading cause of problem-solving failures. This obscure problem involves our self “trying” to attack a problem we think we understand to successfully apply our solution. There are several problems with this strategy, not least of which is what Yoda said, “Try or Do.” Or as Ken Blanchard of the One-Minute Manager fame used to say, “Trying is just a noisy way of not doing something.”

Yet another serious problem here, is that every problem is already in motion when we first become aware of it, and it will keep moving all the time we are trying to stop and fix it. And sometimes we are actually aggravating the problem while we are trying to solve it. Behind all this trying strategy is a compelling illusion, which involves our sense of being a separate “self” from everything else, which is not really how it is. Like the on-going problems always being in motion, the same is true with the “self,” which is also in perpetual change and motion, and thinking we can stop that to use “ourself” as a separate force, is very impossible.

An analogy here with our attempt to try and fix or cure a problem, is our eyes trying to see themselves, which obviously is impossible even with today’s technological advances. Our self and everything in life is constantly moving and changing and thinking we can stop everything to understand a problem and then apply a likely already obsolete solution is futile thinking.

There are no results solving this second problem-solving problem until we begin to see ourselves as already an integral part of the problem and rid ourselves of our cognitive biases getting in the way, to see the clues for solution, hidden deeply within the problem. The end game here is to free your artificial idea of a separate and distinct self to become a real force. This is like an expert archer not knowing for sure when the bow string is released and the arrow flies, simultaneously.

The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problems. ~Mahatma Gandhi.