The document discusses how managers should focus on building problem solving systems and capabilities within their teams rather than trying to directly solve all problems themselves. It emphasizes that the manager's role is to identify and address barriers that prevent team progress by developing a strong problem solving culture, methods, and management systems that enable problems to surface and be continually solved at all levels of the organization. Effective problem solving requires changing behaviors to more openly surface even hard problems, thoroughly understand root causes, and solve issues collaboratively across boundaries.

1. Building a
Problem Solving Organization
Jamie Flinchbaugh
Lean Learning Center

2. Introduction
Right amount?
Manager’s Overloaded?
Workload
Overwhelmed?
What percentage of the manager’s time is
spent on problems?
 Those chosen
 Those that pop up and demand attention
How many would describe their jobs entirely as
solving problems?

3. The 25 Problems Problem
Your team has 25 problems. But these are NOT your problems.
Your problems are not the sum total of your direct reports’
problems. You do not have 25 problems. You have your own
problems.
You Your
Team
Your
Team’s
Problems
Not Your Problems

4. What are your problems?
Your Problems
You
What
Problems
+ Barriers
Get In
Their
Way
Your problems are:
 The barriers that prevent progress
 Breakdowns in your systems
 Opportunities that enable success across the work
of your direct reports

5. The Manager as System Architect
The role of the manager is not
to solve all of the problems
PROBLEM
but to build the systems SOLVING
capable of solving problems CULTURE +
at every level. BEHAVIORS
PROBLEMS
PROBLEM
PROBLEMS
SOLVING
MGMT +
METHOD + SYSTEMS
SKILLS

6. PROBLEM
• Good problem statements
SOLVING
METHOD +
establish our vector for
SKILLS improvement
• The ability to explore current
What capabilities do we reality begins with the
cultivate to surface and question of what do we need
solve problems. to learn more about?
• Turning the Plan – Do –
Check – Act wheel as we
improve through
experimentation
• Tools may include A3s,
DMAIC, 5 Whys and more –
but how they are used
matters most

7. • Build the work in order to
PROBLEMS
MGMT +
SYSTEMS
make problems visible – 5S,
just-in-time, kanban are all
mechanisms to accomplish
How do we manage the
process of surfacing, this objective
engaging in, and solving
problems.
• A process to surface
includes definition of what
is a problem, how to
surface it, to whom, and
how they will respond
• Are we tracking the
problems and the response

8. Surface Problems by a Process

9. PROBLEM • Do we surface problems
SOLVING
CULTURE +
BEHAVIORS
quickly?
• Do we write down the
What behaviors support a really hard problems that
strong problem solving
culture we have no idea how to
solve?
• Do we dig deeper and
understand cause and
effect?
• Do we work problems
across boundaries?

10. A Behavior Change
How it is often done How it should be done

11. Problem Solving Dimensions
PROBLEM
SOLVING
CULTURE +
BEHAVIORS
PROBLEMS
PROBLEM
PROBLEMS
SOLVING
MGMT +
METHOD + SYSTEMS
SKILLS

12. Find Me
Jamie Flinchbaugh, Lean Learning Center
Jamie@LeanLearningCenter.com /
www.LeanLearningCenter.com
Blog: www.JamieFlinchbaugh.com
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