Obstacles to True Consensus – Solutioneering

Following on from the third post in this mini-series, today I’ll describe another obstacle to True Consensus. Again, it’s about the behaviour of certain key people. And again, in line with our belief that “People are Good”, the behaviours we’re discussing are not dysfunctional behaviours, but the outstanding, positive behaviours that have brought the company to its present success.

The term “solutioneering” describes our natural tendency to jump to a solution, and elaborating that solution, even implementing something, before we fully understand the problem at hand.

Obstacle: Solutioneering

If we think about solutions while we are analysing a core problem, we will distort reality to fit the solution we have in our mind.

And at the time we’re creating the solution, any time we spend on thinking about how we’ll implement it will distort the solution, too.

In other words, we’ll come up with better solutions, and implement them better, when we tackle any candidate idea in clearly delineated and separated steps:

1. Analyse the core problem. Simply understand the problem, and the underlying core conflict.
2. Find the solution
3. Decide how to implement the solution

You may recognise this approach as the Three Fundamental Questions of Theory of Constraints.

1. What to change?
2. What to change to?
3. How to effect the change?

At each step, we forbid ourselves from considerations better reserved to the other steps. Given the risk of confusion, delusion, distortion, and ineffective conversations, we must maintain the separation between these steps. Absent such separation, the risks of conflating these concerns means we will be that much less likely to achieve our essential True Consensus.

Next time: Summary – Summarising this mini-series.

– Bob

Further Reading

Beyond the Goal ~ Eliyahu M. Goldratt (Audiobook only)
Theory of Constraints: What to Change ~ Dave Lane (blog post)