A Problem-Solving Process
You bump into your vendor representative at a networking event and you ask, “How’s production coming along on my order?” The vendor raises an eyebrow and casually responds “I’m just waiting on your purchase order”. You choke on your drink and blurt out a few angry expletives. After all, this vendor knew the order was on the critical path for an important project. This should have been taken care of two weeks ago when you sent the order to their purchasing department. The vendor responds defensively exclaiming “It’s not my fault! What’s your problem anyway?”
So what is the problem, really? Is it the vendor’s lack of concern? His or her lack of follow up? Is it the incompetence of the purchasing department? Your own lack of follow up? Or is it that your project is now two weeks behind? Unfortunately, your problem-solving efforts can derail if you focus on the wrong question at the wrong time.
If you cut yourself, the first thing you need to do is stop the bleeding; then you repair the wound with stitches or bandages, and then you look to what caused the cut and prevent it from happening again. Too often, we go to the last step first and conduct a biased root-cause analysis combined with blaming and punishing all while we bleed to death over whose fault it is.
MITIGATE: The first step is to contain the problem and minimize further loss. That means the first answer to the question, “what’s your problem?” is “how do I get the order processed as quickly as possible?” You need maximum cooperation to limit the damage in the short term and finger-pointing is not going to get you there.
REPAIR: The next step is to try to undo the damage that has already been done and get things back on track if possible. That means the second focus in our example is, to figure out how you can recover the lost time. Do your best to keep emotion out of it. If you don’t have a contingency plan, you will need to work together from the same side of the table because again, maximum cooperation is the priority.
PREVENT: Once the dust has settled, you can then look at what to do proactively to prevent the situation from occurring again. This is where you can uncover the source of the problem and do contingency planning to develop effective preventative processes and hold people accountable if needed.
Putting it all together, a solution-oriented response to the vendor might sound like this… “I want to help you complete this order because it sounds like something might be wrong. What can be done to find and process the order that I sent to your purchasing department last week and get the delivery dates back on track for this very important project?” Then once you have that discussion, you can talk about preventative solutions.
Take a look at some of the emails you have sent recently regarding issues and problems. Are you focusing on solutions that address the right problems at the right times?