A boss once told me that he did not mind answering questions but he had one rule when his employees approached him with a problem: Make sure the problem is clear.
His company operated very complex software that often created questions from its users. In order for him to answer the questions he had to first make sure he was answering the right question.
His time was valuable and he did not have the time to go back and forth 15 times to figure out what question needed to be answered. Even more, he was not going to be able to fix the problem until he knew which problem needed to be fixed.
Instead of saying, “a customer has a question about why an order was incorrect,” I learned to say, “order #1234 was fulfilled with 10 more parts than required, and the client would like to know how our data configured that.”
The more information I could provide, the easier it was for him to answer the right question.
I don’t think this is unique to business, I think this is a common oversight in our daily lives.
Throughout the day, we face many problems. We cannot know how to solve them until we make sure the problem is clear.
For instance, say we leave for work at 8:30 am. Our typical commute that would normally take 30 minutes takes 35 minutes because there is extra traffic on the freeway. We are late for work and our boss is not happy.
We could say that our problem is an unhappy boss. We could also say that there are too many drivers in the morning.
But neither of those explanations explains the real question.
In his book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, describes this as the substitution principle. He says that if an answer to a question is not easily found, our brain will find a related question that is easier and will answer it.
Kahneman gives the following examples of substitution:
- How happy are you with your life these days? becomes What is my mood right now?
- How popular will the president be six months from now? becomes How popular is the president right now?
The trouble with the substitution principle is that answering the simpler question can come at the price of not answering the most pressing question.
In the example I gave about being late for work, the issue is that we leave our house with no time to spare in the morning. We do not give our self any room for error or extra traffic. We can’t control the traffic but we can control how early we leave.
Leaving just 10 minutes earlier would give us the leeway needed to prevent an unhappy boss.
When problems arise throughout our day we need make sure the problem is clear. That is the best way to make sure we will be able to solve it.
Photo credit: Wikipedia
