For Employees

How to help employees problem solve with the meta-problem

Problem solving at work can be complicated because there are often a lot of moving pieces and no single person has visibility to all of them. One person will be part of a project which is distantly related to meeting a business need.

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Helping an employee be a better problem solver starts with recognizing the different kinds of problems:

• Problems the employee should try to solve themselves.

• Problems the employee has tried their best at, but is stuck and needs help with.

• Problems that require a business evaluation of competing priorities.

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To help an employee be better at problem solving with the meta-problem, the first step is to teach them these three different categories of problems. Unfortunately, it is not always easy to tell the difference. When you task your employee with a project, it's your responsibility to give them some guidelines for when they should check back in. Consider these different possible scenarios:

• You tasked someone with a project and it turns out they did not have the right skills to do the work. You would want them to recognize relatively early that they need some help instead of just pushing on and trying to solve it themselves.

• You tasked someone with a project and it was a little complex so they come back immediately and ask for help. You would want them to use their problem solving skills to try some things and see if they can figure it out.

• You tasked someone with a project and there are multiple ways to do the work, with different benefits and costs. You may want them to make a judgement call, or you might prefer they bring the options back to you with the right information to let you make the call on what path to pursue.

Recognizing what kind of problem you are facing

I personally have found it very freeing to realize that some choices are just "a business decision" that I should take back to leadership. I have also seen more junior employees really seize the concept as it helps resolve much of the uncertainty about when they should keep trying versus when they need to go back for help. Even the category of problems where the employee needs extra support is a specific version of a business decision - should we spend the resources on me learning to do this thing, or is it better for me to get some help?

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Once you have worked with your staff on these different categories of problems, you can help them more effectively tackle each one.

For business decisions, your employees need to identify what information you would need to actually make that call. Presentations can focus on the benefits and costs of each alternative, as well as any unknowns that are still to be resolved.

Using the meta-problem to make choices