May 6, 2005
Problem Solving With A No-Return Policy
One of the toughest things to instill in any organization is the notion that the focus should be on opportunities and not “problems”.
Not all problems deserve to be solved and of those that do, not all of them need to be solved by you. A problem-solving focus does not really move a law firm forward. When you solve one problem there is always another one to take its place. If you focus on opportunities, you will be surprised how often many of the so-called problems fade away.
One of the aspects of Parkinson’s Law is that, over time, expenses rise to meet income and work expands to fill available time. That natural force at work in a firm is due in part to the “problem-solving” mentality that often prevails. For example, for the first time in memory, a bill for one client is accidentally included in the envelope for another client. Many firms have responded to similar situations by having a second person check the contents of all bills before mailing. They do so under the banner “let’s keep it from ever happening again”. Did that problem really need to be solved? Did we really need to double the resources invested in mailing bills to prevent something that has happened only once in our memory? The answer is no. But those are the kinds of decisions that result in Parkinson’s Law occurring in most firms.
When your team starts talking about a problem, stop and ask, "Is this a problem that really needs to be solved and, if so, do I really need to solve it?" The time you spend solving a problem is time no longer available to pursue opportunities. Your mantra should be, “Select problems carefully and when you do select them, solve them with a no-return policy.”
Most problem solving merely puts things back where they should have been to start with. For example, a squirrel shorts out the electricity and the firm’s server crashes. Restoring power, getting the server back up and recovering files from a backup only treats the symptoms. That wasn’t the problem and the problem has not been fixed with a no-return policy. The problem is that the firm did not have a temporary or permanent backup power supply to prevent the crash or to allow normal operations to continue uninterrupted.
Select problems carefully and, when you do select them, solve those selected with a no-return policy.
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Filed under Management by Tom Collins