The first rule is if you see a snake, don’t call committees, don’t call your buddies, don’t form a team, don’t get a meeting together, just kill the snake.
I have a mental model I call my Problem Solving Maturity Model. It goes like this.
At the lowest end of the maturity model are direct reports who complain about issues, particularly unconstructively. “This sucks” or “that’s stupid” are the most obtuse forms of this, but just pointing out problems is a less pernicious manifestation as well.
Folks on the mature end of the model solve problems, often by the time I’m hearing about it. These folks are high performers. There’s a bit of danger here in solving problems without talking to others. But folks who can judge when to just solve the problem without asking are really dialed into the organization’s needs. It’s ok to ask before solving, in particular if you’re new to an organization and trying to figure out the API or if the solution is expensive or political.
The point though is that solving problems » finding problems. The latter is necessary but not sufficient.
So here’s the maturity model:
- “This is a problem” or “This is dumb”
- “This is a problem; here’s what we should do about it…” (notice the use of the ambiguous we)
- “This is a problem; here’s how I’m planning on fixing it…let me know if you have feedback”
- “This was a problem; I already fixed it.”
I hear pushback sometimes that a direct report may not know how to fix a problem and so it’s not fair to ding them. A few thoughts there.
First, I’m more willing to accept this the earlier someone is in their career. They may not know how to navigate the org or they may not have developed the professional muscles to realize that they should bring solutions. That’s a coaching moment; don’t waste it.
Second, I could see a case for more senior people being handed more intractable problems. My rebuttal to this though is that the more senior you are, the more that your role is about solving intractable problems. The Secretary of State doesn’t just get to hand off their intractable issues to the President. They are hired to solve exactly those issues!
I might refine this argument by saying that the more removed a problem is from someone’s role, the more tolerance I have for someone not coming with solutions. That being said, I still believe that it’s a sign of professional maturity for someone to clearly articulate the problem and be clear that they’re at a loss for how to solve it. A mid-level engineer may see dysfunction (that’s affecting them) with some HR-related process and not know how to solve it. But if it’s a problem related to form-validation in the core product where they work, I don’t want to hear complaints without plans.
Just kill the 🐍.