Your boss just left your office. She told you that production on your shift is down 15% this quarter and you need to find a way to fix that … and quickly.

You sigh. You’ve been through these problem solving exercises before and they always suck the energy out of you. Worse yet, the solutions that are generated never seem to last long term.

With resignation, you reach for your calendar and look for a time that you can bring your team together to have yet another discussion about how to become more productive.

Sound familiar? If it does, you’re not alone. Organizations all across the planet have been taught for decades that the road to success lies in understanding the problem, conducting a root cause analysis, brainstorming and analyzing potential solutions, and selecting and implementing the most appropriate one.

We all know this model. It, or some variation of it, is taught in most courses related to planning and decision making – whether that planning and decision making is for clients or an organization. And it’s hard to argue that the model hasn’t been successful. But at what cost?

Problem solving methodologies are rooted in discovering what went wrong and how to fix it. They were created to address the mechanical issues of a mechanized society. But they are less effective when applied to human beings.

When problem solving models are applied to human systems the focus is the issue, the problem, the weakness … and the person or persons responsible. Human nature being what it is, relationships amongst team members are often weakened as a search for the “reason for the problem” is undertaken and most of the people involved adopt a defensive posture and look to avoid being blamed. It is a deficit-based approach that seeks to understand yesterday’s difficulties in an effort to find tomorrow’s solutions.

As someone, immersed in appreciative means of working with people, I couldn’t help but be bothered by this historical emphasis on weaknesses and negativity. Improving productivity, increasing employee engagement and enhancing corporate profitability do not by necessity require a deficit-based approach. No less an authority than Peter Drucker noted that “the task of leadership is to create an alignment of strengths, making our weaknesses irrelevant.”

So … I did some thinking. It took me a while – the better part of a year, actually – but finally, I got it.

This problem solving model that we’ve been using for years is one that we’ve been using …. well, for years. In fact, when you do the research, you find its origins are in the 1930’s, perhaps even earlier. That’s more than 70 years ago!

Well I’m sure you’ve noticed that there’s been a change … or two … or three … since then. Images of the 1930s

Life has changed in so many dramatic ways at home and in workplaces throughout the world. How is it that so many other aspects of our lives have changed so dramatically over the last 70 years, but the way we approach working with “problems” has not?

So, if we want to move away from problem solving models … what’s an alternative?

It seems to me that one alternative is to take an appreciative, strengths-based perspective to understanding organizational quandaries. At its heart, an appreciative process is a relatively new means of addressing organizational difficulties fixed in the search for what is going well in organizations and how one might build on that.

Check back next week and I’ll share with you my thoughts on how this alternative perspective can address difficulties while creating a stronger, affirmative culture that builds individual competencies and organizational capacity. Until then …