Let us begin this review with the riddle that this book presents. It shouldn’t really exist, or rather, it should not be as good as it is.
The author himself cites some of the reasons why. Problem-solving, by its nature, is incredibly difficult to teach and, therefore, by extension, write about. That would be, of course, if you were to produce a work that concentrated on technique-based approaches and tool kits.
Gladly, Mr Flinchbaugh does not attempt to do this, and the recognition is right there in the title. A fishbone never solved a problem. People, however, do.
What this book does very well is help steer us towards an environment where problem-solving can flourish, and this requires real effort.
In the not too dim and distant past, problem-solving was carried out to keep us alive. Problem: there is a sabre-toothed tiger up that tree. Solution: run away, quickly.
Speed of thought was, therefore, of the essence. The famous experiment by Daniel Kahneman reveals this, where many of us jump to the obvious conclusion about the relative prices of the bat and ball. It feels right to do so, but we often miss something. In the case of the bat and ball problem, it is the rigour of a cross-check. (Thinking Fast and Slow: D. Kahneman, 2011, p44.)
Flinchbaugh serves us by describing the cultural conditions required to value the slowing of thought, the formation of a robust problem statement, and the scientific-style thinking that will lead us to resolution. Yes, templates can give us structure, but they are no substitute for the coaching questions “What are you planning to do next?” and “What do you expect to happen?”
The success metric of leaders is not how many problems they solved but rather how many people did they coach to solve problems? Better to ask the question, “are my team better problem-solvers than when I found them?”
Flinchbaugh addresses these sorts of topics deeply, plus some that you would not expect to see. For instance, I was delighted to see a chapter called “Integrating Intuition.” Data isn’t always important if your gut is telling you something. Try it – though try with the structure of PDCA and hypothesis testing. At the very least, you will learn.
I learned so much from reading this book. Mr Flinchbaugh succeeded in getting me to have another look at my attitude towards band-aid style solutions, as well as challenging other truisms that I held. Life, like problem-solving, is very rarely black and white – though, in both endeavours, people always come through in the end.
I would thoroughly recommend this book to anyone involved in problem-solving, from the expert to the novice. I will certainly be reading it a second time to deepen the learning, but, as ever, the actual test comes from going out into the field, trying, failing and learning.
Fall over seven times; get up eight. An easy five stars.