Problem Solving. One of my favorite learning experience stories from my career in the coffee business involves a time when a simple team task turned into a nightmare. It was one of my most formative moments as a leader. The lessons have stayed with me in a vividly powerful way and continue to teach me today.
Many years ago I was holding a quarterly meeting with my team at company headquarters. As a VP with just a few years of business unit leadership under my belt, I was still finding my stride as an effective leader. The meeting was relatively routine. We were reviewing our plan, assessing the team’s performance against that plan, and aligning on any adjustments we needed to make to bring in our sales target.
Everything was going just fine.
At the end of the first day of the meeting, our Senior VP stopped in. He had some news for us and a task. We needed to take a price increase with our wholesale customers. The commodity price of coffee had spiked and was holding at elevated levels. The fact that the cost of coffee was volatile was not news, but peaks and valleys usually evened out over time. We had a track record with our customers of riding out those waves and keeping our prices steady. It was a unique approach in the business and our customers appreciated the predictability that came along with our smart management of coffee costs.
This time however, we could not ride it out. Our hedging operations had run out of slack and we now needed to increase our prices to customers to maintain our minimum profitability requirements. So, our SVP told us we needed to bring this news to the marketplace, and prepare our sales team to deliver the news to our customers in a way that would calm their concerns and maintain our relationships. We agreed to build out the talking points for our team and hold a conference call with everyone the first thing the next morning.
No problem we thought. The seven of us were up to the problem solving task. As salespeople, we knew this was the hardest news to bring to customers. A price increase. Handled clumsily, it had the potential to send customers shopping for other suppliers. But we were confident that seven smart people could come up with the right things to say to our people and our customers. We decided to order some pizzas and head for a comfortable conference room to craft a clever one pager that we could deliver in the morning.
Then the storm hit.
We started out OK. It even seemed fun to be having an evening pizza party to complete the task together. We genuinely enjoyed each other’s company. But what started with a few laughs soon began to turn in a much different direction. Since we hadn’t executed many price increases in the past, we started to brainstorm all of the things that could go wrong. What objections would customers have? How would we explain ourselves? What if customers went to other suppliers? How would we get them back? The list of concerns went on.
Then we shifted to how we would address these issues, our choices about what we wanted our people to say when they spoke to customers. As we worked on solutions, some members of the team kept on bringing up new problems? They were still brainstorming. A few members of the team were growing impatient. They wanted us to make a decision and get on to implementation. They wanted the finished script for the conference call and assignments on who was going to deliver each part of our presentation to the team.
As we tried to complete the work, the tug of war between the brainstormers and the implementers continued. We weren’t aware of the causes of the struggle at the time, but it was becoming serious. What started as a casual pizza party had transformed into arguments, with people standing up from their chairs to passionately make their points. Eventually a few had to walk outside to get some air so as to avoid further confrontation. Ultimately we completed the task, with some language that was acceptable but not spectacular, and we went to our hotel. The next day we delivered the news, our people informed their customers, the risks we thought would follow did not and our business continued on just fine. Except that we had some serious scars across a management team we thought was quite healthy.
So what happened?
After we calmed down over the days and weeks that followed, we puzzled over what had happened to us. None of us were particularly volatile people. Why had this group of grownups almost brawled over something so basic. It had to do with our individual problem solving styles.
There are essentially four steps to problem solving. They are:
1. Identify the problem
2. Brainstorm for options
3. Identify the solution
4. Implement the solution
Additionally, each of us tends to be strongest in one of the four problem solving activities. It’s our first nature to be good at that part. I might be good at brainstorming for options. You might be good at implementing the solution that is chosen. Add to this dynamic that under times of great stress, we as individuals go to our first nature behavior tendencies. We over play those behaviors. If I am wired to make decisions quickly, when you turn up the heat on me I just want to make a decision and move on. Now. I don’t want to hear any more about options. Just pick one.
My close colleague and co-leader at the time was a person named James. He had been exposed to a line of thinking about decision making that incorporated Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® to identify which styles were most effective and least effective during the four stages of problems solving. Since we had already gone through the assessments as a team, that data was readily available to us. The observations and conclusions we made once we studied it were powerful.
James and I identified the individuals at each stage of the process who would likely be the best at that step of problem solving. Then we identified which steps they might not be as effective, in fact where their go to style would undermine the process. We shared the thinking. We all became more self-aware. When the process hit a person’s sweet spot, that person spoke up. Sometimes they even led that phase. We allowed others to lead the parts where we weren’t strong. We each worked to pay attention to those segments, and contribute without overplaying our first nature strengths.
We did all this out in the open. At meetings, we would tape our MBTI® charts to the wall, so we could have an available visual reference to get us grounded on what we could expect from each other, and what we needed to draw upon from ourselves to produce positive outcomes.
We went forward as a management team and never had another blowup like the one at the pizza party. The scars eventually healed. Many of us became close friends. Some became friends for life.
It is one of the most vivid learning lessons from my career. From my life. It happened because I and the people around me paid attention to what happened to us. We wanted to understand it. We couldn’t let it go.
Pay attention. Don’t make your problem solving harder by overlooking the style of the people you are working with to find the solution.
Get to know them. Understand them. Do it out in the open.
That’s what a compassionate leader does.
Lead well.
(Please share your comments below.)
Click to visit Jim’s book page:
“The Modern Compassionate Leader – 12 Essential Characteristics of the Rising Sales Leader”
Follow Jim on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter.
© Jim Martin and www.jamesmichaelmartin.com, 2016 Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Jim Martin and www.jamesmichaelmartin.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
