“Clients usually ask us how they can drill that hole in the wall. As consultants we are obsessed with finding the best drill that does it in the fastest and most cost-effective way. Sadly, we often forget to ask the client why he or she needs that hole in the first place.” (coaching advice from a VP in my previous company)
Think about the following problem and respond with the first thing that comes into your mind: “I have 24 bottles of water to carry from the supermarket, which I obviously can’t carry all by myself. How do I get them home?”
My first reaction would be to use a car, but if you don’t have a car you can order it online at one of the big supermarket chains and get it home delivered. Problem solved? Yes.
This solution would be a good example of “finding the best drill” as discussed earlier. So let’s take a step back and wonder why we need all this water in the first place. Perhaps I don’t trust the water quality that comes out of the tap. Perhaps I just don’t like the taste. Perhaps it has never occurred to me that in certain regions the tap water is perfectly drinkable.
A solution could be to figure out whether the tap water is perfectly ok to drink in your region and buy such a small water purifier to filter the tap water. This avoids me to even have to think how to carry 24 bottles of water home. Focus on the cause of your problem, rather than the problem.
Let’s bring this to a more familiar corporate environment and think about the following problems:
- “There is a lack of communication in our company.”
- “We have absolutely no idea what the customers are saying.”
- “Our employees can’t find each other.”
Very popular solutions to these problems are:
- “We need a company blog.”
- “We need a Twitter account.”
- “We need SharePoint.”
There is an instinctive reaction to come up with solutions that seem to make a lot of sense at first. If you have a communication problem on the one hand and you know that blogs are an extremely easy way to communicate, then a blogging platform must be your solution. Problem solved.
When someone asks for your help with their SharePoint platform rollout because they want to improve the communication inside the organisation, just take a step back. Ask them what is broken with the way they are doing it now in the first place. Why SharePoint? What do they hope to improve? When do they consider the communication inside the organisation as successful?
Throwing in a social software platform in your organisation isn’t going to solve the challenges you are facing. You first need to figure out what is wrong with the process in the first place. A good starting point might be to have a chat with some of the employees. People that are dealing with that (broken?) process every single day might be a good source of information, don’t you think?
You might learn that the most obvious solution isn’t going to solve the problem at all. Perhaps a surprising result could be that employees find that there are far too many emails being sent out with newsletters, announcements, updates etc. so the problem is that nobody reads them anymore. Your new company blog isn’t going to solve that.
So stop reacting like Pavlov’s dog. Focus on the people, not on the technology.
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Great thoughts and well put. It’s kind of like the old adage “for every complex problem there is a simple solution that is wrong”. Many people are defaulting to looking for easy solutions before they have deeply understood the problem.
BTW I’m very much looking forward to your social business summit http://www.socialbusinesssummit.com Chees.
@karllong
Good point but don’t discount the technology – the tools provide a platform and choosing the right tools are important.
My advice is to co-evolve human factors + tech factors
Indeed a nice article
My learning…
Hold the first thought that comes to mind when you hear a problem. Ask questions to get clarity on the core issue then validate with your first thought. If answer is yes, propose the idea.
Lee, good post and to the point.
Much of this lies in education. No point giving the hungry a fish or grain – you need to teach them how to fish and work the land, give them the right tools – then they can become self sufficient.
It always makes me smile when people say “can you recommend a CRM system” without themselves understanding what they are trying to achieve. My default answer is now Excel… just wacky enough to help them take a step back and understand their own objectives first..
@Karl haha i really like the quote. will borrow it in the future
will you be in the Austin social business summit? I won’t be there unfortunately, I’ll be at the London event
@martin sure thing! and don’t get me wrong, I’m a technologist in my heart (and that is also my background). at Headshift/Dachis we have done a selection of good platforms/vendors we work with, often based on numerous engagements, I’d say that most of the bigger social software platform will do the trick (IBM Connections, Confluence, SharePoint 2010, Jive SBS, etc.). The point I’m trying to make in my posts in general is to focus first on what the user needs and let’s then do a gap analysis with some good platform candidates. But I completely agree with you, no matter how much you focus on the people, if your underlying platform is worthless, you won’t turn it in the next killer app
@Pooran yes, after some years of experience your gut feeling often is right. The potential danger is that you might feel bit too comfortable and stop thinking out of the box because you rely too much on your existing thinking/solution patterns.
@Nigel haha! I’m pretty sure that if you ask 100 people what a CRM system really is and how they think it can solve their problem, that you’ll get some blank faces
all jokes aside, it is very common that clients approach consulting firms with “i have problem XYZ”. it is the task of the consultant then to figure out what the cause of problem XYZ is. but then again, that is the most fun part of the job, right? 
Nice piece and message. In our vertical, financial services, these is a hyper-focus on social media and the tech. They are utilities and end up as commodities, e.g. email.
It is always about people – and we propose our brains really. Here are some of our recent Twitter posts:
- When the same communications tech is used by everybody it becomes a utility and often can overwhelm +turn ppl off. Social media? #t3show
- Why advisors will always be needed: There is no technology solution to a client problem or investing challenge. #t3show
- Party’s over. Noise will be deafening. “Facebook and Twitter: SalesForce.com Offers Social, Real Time Enterprise Tools” http://ow.ly/19tJX
Re: think of the people first. I can’t help but think of the invention of the wheel and how applying that technology to people problems is superior to the reverse.
Therefore I disagree with the assertion that people come first in all situations. Sometimes technology arrives first and solves people problems later. Even unintendidly.
Hi Mark, as a technologist in my heart I fully agree with your comment. One of my roles in the past was to focus on emerging technologies ad advice organisations how they could change the way they are doing certain things by using that technology When you look broader than just Information Technology, you have often very interesting things that are invented by accident or as a side product / cause of something else.
In my post here I was on the one hand focusing on root cause analysis as well as assuring that we don’t forget the human factor in our technology projects. (of course i had to make my statement a bit sharper, but as always, reality is a bit more nuanced
)