Solving complex problems starts with asking questions

Solving problems at work is a difficult job. The context of problems can be very complex in large organisations, where many units, professions, and technologies interact to deliver a product or service. A key challenge that I have observed again and again in more than 25 years of experience in the IT industry is, first of all, and long before we even try to suggest solutions: understanding the problem.

Many of us have experienced an education system that promotes and rewards knowledge, and that does not so much focus on finding the important questions and fields of learning. School curricula already give the collection and structure of questions to be answered and things to be learned. The ‘job’ of pupils is to eagerly acquire the knowledge in these fields and to be able to answer defined questions. That’s mainly how we educate people.

Even during higher education, this pattern will prevail before we might do real science, all at the end, in a doctoral thesis, for example. And a lot of that makes a lot of sense, because it is based on good scientific, technological and practical knowledge that our industries, sciences, and societies have acquired over centuries. However, just this very knowledge and experience can stand in the way when it comes to solving problems.

If the nature of a problem is basically a lack of using available knowledge, that knowledge will be the main ingredient for a good solution, together with basic analytical and structuring skills. Repairing a mechanical defect on a car would be an example. But if we look at complex problems, the perspective changes: Typically, here we can only see parts of what is going on, and such problems are not easy to grasp and understand as a whole.

The challenge is to find out what actually happens in the first place, then to understand what factors are relevant or irrelevant as possible root-conditions and finally to figure out how things are connected and in which kind of dynamics they interact. Only then will we be able to propose and test countermeasures. In consequence, for such complex problems, we will rather have to deal with a lot of unknowns and with a lot of questions that can not be answered directly.

At school, unanswered questions would mean low grades and homework not done. Also, in our jobs, most times, we get paid to propose solutions and to do something, not to ask questions that nobody can answer. That’s why intuitively we tend to seek answers quickly, and we don’t feel well with having so many unanswered questions. Shouldn’t we be the ones who know what is going on in our work environment? And who should know how production or services are organised? Who should understand technology, roles, and how all that plays together? Isn’t that what we get paid for? Will we make a career by asking questions, or rather, others who conclude, suggest, and do something faster than we?

That’s how it probably feels. If we add an eagerness of ‘wanting to know’ and an inborn strength of our brain to compose stories out of nothing, we are quickly on a subconscious fast-track: We are composing our idea about what that problem consists of and what is probably causing it. Our brains love to build stories; this is actually what made homo sapiens survive in not-so-safe environments a long time ago.

And that’s what our brains will do, when we look at a complex problem full of white spots: It fills the white spots with whatever we know from the past and whatever we can imagine might fit in halfway — because we need a somewhat functional model of reality, if we want to get orientation and if we want to be able to act.

In the attempt to solve complex problems successfully, this is where the potential trouble and risk start: If we fill white spots with assumptions, if we frame new situations based on what previous experience made us learn, we risk being wrong about what we have in front of us now, right from the start.

Unfortunately, also in this case, “reality bites”: The reality of that problem does not care about how we imagine it might be. We only get it solved if we see how things really are, and how things are connected and caused. The first attempts of construction of the Panama Canal by a French project (1881–1889) failed, because the causes of Malaria were assumed wrongly: ‘Mala aria’ — ‘bad air’ — goes back to what the Romans once thought was the cause. And the US project (1904 -1914) nearly failed due to the same issue of too many severely sick or dead workers, before Dr William C. Gorgas brought scientifically proven new insights in 1905: Malaria is caused by mosquitoes, of course, as we know today.

That’s where the power of a good question comes into play: If we accept that it is wise to ‘respect’ and appreciate unanswered questions as what they are: Things that we don’t know and that we need to investigate to better understand reality. Then, one good question can be worth much more than tons of knowledge that simply does not really apply in this case.

During problem solving in large organizations, such questions turn around what actually happens in a process, about people dynamics, about the influence of incentives, about what facts we have vs. what facts we should have, and what ‘good’ would look like versus what is the gap at the moment. And finally: Why is this important now? (Is it important, really?)

Good conversation and coaching techniques help us to use questions in a powerful way, which will generate new insights through different reflection, different action, and different communication with others. And it will help to make the problem owner see also her/his own individual way of acting and thinking, and where the limits, strengths, and weaknesses are.

It requires discipline from a coach to guide such conversations, because the role is not to think about the problem himself, but to observe how the other person is looking at the problem. That allows us to choose questions that will make the other one think and reflect with a different, wider horizon. Open questions (in contrast to leading or closed questions) are most powerful because they widen the view and stimulate reflection and investigative action.

Two more things can make these conversations and open questions even more powerful: Honesty and reduction.

Reduction — what does that mean? One of the challenges that experienced coaches have is their own rich knowledge and astute ability to detect potentially important questions and new perspectives around a problem. In his wide universe of experience, a lot of concepts and considerations seem to be quite ‘clear’ and ‘understood’ for the coach in terms of their potential importance and value. Thus, there are a lot of questions that can be brought up — and quite fast, that is too many questions for the counterpart and too much of the coach’s own subconscious hypothesis-forming, creeping into the conversation again.

It is simple: We can avoid that by remembering ourselves that it might be one very simple, good question, that makes the other one think, reflect, and start to investigate into new horizons and perspectives. And by doing the hard job of choosing which very few questions are probably most helpful for the other at this point of work on the problem. That must not be the super sophisticated question — things that might be about simple and basic aspects — or even better: white spots — might turn out to be the most powerful questions. It might not feel like this after a life of experience, but actually, many times less is more and simpler is better in such conversations.

What is simple and obvious for an experienced coach might be new and rich in insights for somebody else. One of the most powerful and simple questions, for example, is: What has actually happened? And what do we make it mean? I have seen so many conversations, where this was not well investigated or understood, but lots of assumptions and hypothesis and stories are already there in the minds. Smoke above the fire… that blurs the view of reality.

The second thing is honesty. What does that mean in the context of questions? This might occur less frequently, but is even more important in more progressed conversations: If a conversation about a problem starts to feel strange or cumbersome or unproductive — or if it feels like: “Something is missing here… but I can’t tell what it is.” Then you are probably at a very interesting point in the coaching or conversation, but might hesitate to express this just simply as it is, because that feels dumb or potentially offensive. I found that then just this can be the most helpful thing to do: Ask simply and very honestly: “I feel that something is missing in this story: What might that be?” Or: “I am lost — how does all that fit together?” Or: “Wow, this is complicated, and difficult to understand — should it be like that? Is that complicated story helpful for others to see what’s going wrong?”

With such honest statements and resulting simple, ‚dumb‘ questions, I got great ‘aha’-moments in conversations, where I felt we were lost and stagnating. That honesty changed perspective, made others think and triggered inspiration to seek new perspectives. And it helped me as a coach to not get stuck with my counterpart, just because I felt I had to find a more sophisticated question.

Thus, let’s welcome unanswered questions and things we don’t know as valuable resources to let us find the way towards reality. And reality seen, as it really is, dramatically increases the likelihood of our solutions being effective. But this needs humility, openness and taking a break from motives like ‘looking good’ and ‘giving a smart impression’. Maybe this can be compared to the innocence of how children look at the world: “Oh, marvellous, all these things that happen around me — and how can I learn to understand all that?”