Are Complex Problems Sabotaging Your Overly Simple Solutions?

What happens when your preference for overly simple solutions sabotages how you serve internal and external clients?

You and I love simple solutions, don’t we? These involve a minimum number of steps, are usually linear in nature, and solve a discrete need.

Over time, an overly-simple problem-solving strategy results in comfortably delivering the fastest, cheapest, easiest, or most frequently-applied solutions to every problem. However, what happens when you are faced with clients requiring not-so-simple solutions to complex problems?

How you and your company respond to complex client needs often reflects the quality of your organization’s internal problem-solving capabilities.  

When I speak to and consult for clients on individual and organizational growth strategies, I focus on whether they and their company have the internal capacity to deliver more complex solutions. Addressing that question, in itself, requires taking a complex perspective about your business and human capital strategy.

Taking your business to the next level is a reasonable professional aspiration when you also take your professional capabilities to the next level, as well. However, when you or your company are not yet capable of best serving clients with complex problems, you really need to:

1. identify and collaborate with partners who bring those missing capabilities to the table; while you
2. invest in re-skilling or upskilling employee capabilities to deliver on complex client requirements from a higher tier of clients; while you either
3. are transparent with the client and mutually revise project scope to fit within your current capabilities; or you
4. make the hard, and honest, call to decline the opportunity.
5. BTW: Faking it until you make it is never a viable, or ethical, option in my professional playbook, especially with complex problem solving.

Are you finding yourself less competitive because the complexity of client problems sabotages your overly simple solutions?

My professional mantra is: “Depending on where we sit around the table, we solve problems differently. Shouldn’t our differences become strengths and opportunities to better serve each other, first, so we better serve our clients, together?”

Let’s get to where you really need to go when it comes to problem solving, together. So you can get your teams and your clients to where they really need to go, together with you. Contact me here to get started.

Searching for a coaching catalyst to get you unstuck professionally? Looking for a meeting or event speaker focused on what is new and next? Then engage me to present a One Millimeter Mindset ™ program! Delivered virtually or in-person.

Change Agent | Collaboration Catalyst | Complex Problem Solver | Professional Innovation | Cross Functional Leadership | Speaker, Consultant, Coach, Author |

To learn more about incorporating complex problem solving and Wicked Problem Solving into your professional arsenal of awesomeness, contact me here. I will send you my affiliate link.

Babette Ten Haken’s One Millimeter Mindset™ programs catalyze people who solve problems differently to collaborate more successfully. Become more professionally visible, cross-functionally relevant, and strategically valuable as you create and implement innovative and robust business outcomes together. Babette is a business-oriented STEM professional, qualitative Voice of the Customer facilitator, PMI-certified Wicked Problem Solver, and Six Sigma Green Belt (Quality). She is a member of the ASQ, SHRM, PMI, the National Speakers Association. Her playbook of cross-functional collaboration, Do YOU Mean Business? is available on Amazon.com. Contact Babette here. Image source: Adobe Stock.