Advice

How to Solve Problems Easier: The One Skill That Actually Matters

The smartest person I ever worked with couldn't solve a bloody thing.

I'm talking about my old manager at a consulting firm in Melbourne - brilliant bloke, PhD in engineering, could recite industry standards like poetry. But when the coffee machine broke down and half the office was ready to riot, he stood there for twenty minutes trying to work out the "optimal solution framework" while I just unplugged the thing and plugged it back in.

That's when it hit me. Problem-solving isn't about being the smartest person in the room. It's about being the most practical.

The Real Problem With Problem Solving

After fifteen years training teams across Australia, I've noticed something alarming. We're churning out employees who can analyse problems to death but can't actually fix anything. They'll create a twelve-step process to decide what colour pen to use for meeting notes.

The corporate world has convinced us that every problem needs a committee, a PowerPoint presentation, and at least three stakeholder meetings. Bollocks.

Most problems are simple. They just look complicated because we've been trained to make them complicated.

Here's the thing nobody wants to admit: 78% of workplace problems can be solved with common sense and about five minutes of actual thinking. Not brainstorming sessions. Not root cause analysis workshops. Just thinking.

Start With What You Actually Know

I worked with a team in Brisbane last year who spent six weeks trying to figure out why their customer complaints were rising. Six weeks! They had charts, graphs, external consultants, the works.

Turns out their new receptionist was hanging up on difficult callers because nobody had trained her properly. The solution? Twenty minutes of basic customer service fundamentals training. Done.

But here's what they did wrong from day one - they started with what they didn't know instead of what they did know.

When you're facing a problem, write down everything you already know about it. Not what you think might be causing it. What you actually, definitively know. You'll be surprised how much you already understand.

Most people skip this step because it feels too simple. They want to dive straight into the exciting detective work. Bad idea.

The Five-Minute Rule That Changes Everything

Every problem gets five minutes of my undivided attention before I involve anyone else. That's it. Five minutes.

No phones, no emails, no interruptions. Just me and the problem having a proper conversation.

You'd be amazed what surfaces when you're not trying to impress anyone with your analytical prowess. Sometimes the solution is so obvious you feel like an idiot for not seeing it immediately.

Last month, a client called me in panic because their new employee onboarding system wasn't working. They were ready to scrap the whole thing and start again. I spent five minutes reading through their process documentation and found the issue - they'd accidentally set the system to send welcome emails to terminated employees instead of new hires.

Five minutes. $50,000 saved.

The five-minute rule works because it forces you to focus on solutions, not analysis. Analysis is seductive - it makes you feel productive while achieving nothing. Solutions require you to actually do something.

Why Your Team Can't Solve Problems (And It's Not Their Fault)

Most workplaces accidentally train their employees to be helpless.

Think about it. Every time someone brings you a problem and you solve it for them, you're teaching them that problems are your responsibility, not theirs. You're creating professional children.

I see this constantly during team development training sessions. Capable adults who manage complex personal lives suddenly become utterly dependent the moment they walk into the office.

The fix is simple but painful: stop solving problems for your team.

When someone comes to you with a problem, ask them what they've already tried. If the answer is "nothing," send them away to try something. Anything.

This feels harsh at first, especially if you're naturally helpful. But you're not helping them by doing their thinking for them. You're crippling them.

The Two Questions That Actually Matter

Forget root cause analysis. Forget fishbone diagrams. Forget all the complicated frameworks you learned in that expensive workshop.

There are only two questions that matter when solving problems:

What would happen if we did nothing?
What's the simplest thing we could try first?

That's it. Everything else is procrastination dressed up as process.

The first question eliminates about 40% of problems immediately. Many issues solve themselves if you just leave them alone. Not every problem requires intervention.

The second question forces you to start somewhere instead of planning forever. Action beats analysis every single time.

I watched a team in Perth spend three months developing the "perfect" solution to their filing system chaos. Meanwhile, their competitors were making sales while they were colour-coding folders.

Sometimes good enough today beats perfect next month.

The Uncomfortable Truth About Expertise

Here's something that'll ruffle some feathers: expertise can make you worse at problem-solving.

Experts know too much. They see complications that don't exist and solutions that don't work because they're overthinking everything.

I've watched IT specialists spend hours debugging complex technical issues that could be fixed by turning something off and on again. But that solution feels beneath their expertise level, so they ignore it.

The best problem solvers I know are curious amateurs, not seasoned experts. They ask obvious questions that experts wouldn't dare ask. They try simple solutions that experts dismiss as naive.

Don't get me wrong - expertise matters for complex technical problems. But most workplace problems aren't complex technical problems. They're simple human problems dressed up in complicated language.

Create Problem-Solving Momentum

Here's what I learned from watching hundreds of teams struggle with problems: momentum matters more than perfection.

When you're stuck on a problem, the worst thing you can do is sit there thinking about it. The best thing you can do is try something - anything - even if it's wrong.

Wrong action teaches you something. No action teaches you nothing.

I use what I call the "15-minute experiment" with my clients. When they're stuck, I make them pick the first reasonable solution they can think of and try it for exactly 15 minutes. No longer.

Most of the time, it works well enough to keep moving forward. Sometimes it fails spectacularly, but even failures provide useful information.

The point isn't to find the perfect solution immediately. The point is to build momentum and learn by doing instead of thinking.

Stop Making Problems Bigger Than They Are

We have this weird habit of inflating problems to match our available time and resources.

Give someone a week to solve a problem, they'll take a week. Give them an hour, they'll probably solve it in 45 minutes.

Parkinson's Law applies to problem-solving just like everything else. Problems expand to fill the time allocated to solving them.

I've started giving my clients artificial deadlines for everything. Not real deadlines - artificial ones. "We need to decide on this by Tuesday morning" when the real deadline is Friday afternoon.

Works every time. Amazing how quickly people can make decisions when they have to.

The Communication Problem Nobody Talks About

Half the problems I encounter aren't actually problems - they're communication failures disguised as problems.

Someone doesn't understand what's expected of them, so they create a "process improvement opportunity." Someone feels uncomfortable asking questions, so they create a "training gap analysis."

Before you start solving a problem, make sure it's actually a problem and not just someone who's confused or scared to speak up.

This is particularly common with new employees who don't want to look stupid. They'll struggle with something for weeks instead of asking a simple question.

The solution? Make it psychologically safe to ask obvious questions. I tell every team I work with: "The only stupid question is the one you don't ask because you're afraid it's stupid."

Technology Won't Save You

Every workplace thinks the solution to their problems is better software.

New CRM system. New project management tool. New communication platform. New everything.

Here's the uncomfortable truth: if your processes are broken, technology will just help you be broken faster.

Fix your thinking first. Technology second.

I've watched companies spend six figures on sophisticated problem-tracking software while their actual problems got worse. The software gave them beautiful reports about their failures, but it didn't help them fail less.

Before you buy any new tool, ask yourself: "Would this problem still exist if we just communicated better?"

Usually the answer is no.

Make Decisions, Not Committees

The death of good problem-solving is committee-based decision making.

Committees are where good ideas go to die and bad ideas go to multiply.

Every committee meeting I've ever attended could have been replaced by one person spending twenty minutes thinking about the problem and making a decision.

But we're terrified of individual accountability, so we hide behind group consensus. "We all agreed" feels safer than "I decided."

The result? Mediocre solutions that nobody really believes in but everyone can live with.

Stop it. Assign problems to individuals, not groups. Give them authority to make decisions, not just recommendations.

The Follow-Through Problem

Most people are decent at identifying solutions. They're terrible at implementing them.

Implementation is where good problem-solving goes to die.

You know what works better than brilliant solutions that nobody implements? Average solutions that actually get done.

I've started measuring my training success not by how clever the solutions are, but by how many actually get implemented within 30 days.

The number is depressingly low.

If you want to get better at solving problems, get better at following through. Make someone accountable for every solution. Set specific deadlines. Check progress weekly, not monthly.

Problems don't solve themselves. People solve problems. And people need accountability to get things done.

The Australian Advantage

We Australians have a natural advantage when it comes to practical problem-solving. We don't overcomplicate things.

While other cultures are building elaborate frameworks, we're getting on with it. While they're having meetings about meetings, we're trying stuff and seeing what works.

This is our competitive advantage in the global marketplace. Don't lose it by trying to be too sophisticated.

Sometimes the most Australian solution is the best solution: "Yeah, nah, let's just give it a go and see what happens."

What Nobody Teaches You About Problem-Solving

Here's the secret nobody wants to admit: most problems solve themselves if you just wait long enough.

The tricky part is knowing which problems to wait on and which ones need immediate action.

Experience teaches you the difference, but here's a shortcut: if the problem will cost more money or cause more stress tomorrow than it does today, act now. If it won't, wait and see.

About 30% of the problems people bring me disappear completely within a week. They were never really problems - they were temporary situations that felt like problems.

The hardest skill in problem-solving isn't finding solutions. It's knowing when not to solve something.

Final Thought

The best problem solvers I know share one characteristic: they start before they're ready.

They don't wait for perfect information or ideal conditions. They start with what they have and figure it out as they go.

That's the real secret to solving problems easier. Stop preparing to solve them and start actually solving them.

Most problems are simpler than they appear and harder than they should be. The difference between the two is usually just getting started.

Right. Time to stop writing about problem-solving and go solve some actual problems.