Leaders shouldn’t solve problems

Leaders shouldn’t solve problems? What sort of cutesy twist is this? Sure, it’s there to get your attention, but I really do mean it.

The best ‘take you forward’ leaders won’t be solving problems. So, what will they be doing and, by the way, who will be solving the problems?

Cut to the chase: Teams should be solving problems, leaders being part of those teams. Leaders should be finding new problems. Let’s unpack that.

A number of years ago, I had a strategic problem for a school I was leading. The problem was big and important, concerning major campus expansion and certainly worthy of attention by me as CEO and by the Board of Trust as stewards of vision and mission. The problem with the problem, though, was that our school community and its leading supporters weren’t ready for a solution.

We kept talking about different possibilities and preparing different plans, but we didn’t have a critical  mass ready to make a choice and move forward. As chief leader, I kept trying to encourage our community and leader group to choose a solution among the ones we had found. I knew I couldn’t do any substantial progress on the problem alone, but I did want to be a change-making problem solver.

We were stuck for more than a year. Outwardly, things looked good, but our momentum and healthy meeting of challenges was hurt. In metrics, we continued to grow and improve. In the heart of leadership and change-making community, we did much less than our best. We didn’t go backward, but we didn’t go forward either. We stayed strong as a school, but we also were hurt as a school. My leadership was not what it should have or could have been. I wasn’t the leader I wanted to be.

I did learn from it, though. I was stubborn and had a record of success. I was determined to get there with this problem. I should have been finding new problems, even while we kept asking ourselves if we were ready to move to a solution on this big, sticky problem.

This is true even on the landscape-shaping, strategic problems. It’s all the more true on the ‘course of doing business’ problems. I want, as a leader, to be growing the capacity of my team to solve problems as a way of life. And I want to be breaking trail on spotting the new problems which come from visionary pursuit of mission in a changing environment.

For perspective on this, look at the history of science. I love science and it fascinates me. I got my undergrad degree in physics not because I wanted to be a physicist but because I was enthralled with the insights and pursuits of physics. It is a good and hard way of knowing and coming to know new things.

Isaac Newton’s fundamental perspective on the nature of the physical world – his laws of motion – had solved problems for physicists and engineers for literally centuries by the time 1905 came along. They still solve problems today. The laws weren’t repealed. Albert Einstein brought his reference frame with relativity onto the scene and changed everything underneath while changing not too much on top. Science and Western Civilization moved forward in revolutionary ways, and continued to solve most problems of motion and mechanics with Newton’s insights from his Principia. The leader found new problems to solve and the team kept solving today’s and tomorrow’s problems with old and new tools.

Another example from the history of science takes us to Ptolemy’s model of the earth at the center of the universe. This example plays out differently than Newton and Einstein because no one today uses Ptolemy’s model as a problem-solving paradigm for celestial mechanics.

But when Copernicus proposed his challenge to the geocentric universe with the Sun at the center of the solar system, the old model actually still did a better job at solving the problems of where things were in the sky. The old was swimming upstream, however, and it collapsed under the weight of its own problem-solving when a courageous alternative was offered. (Copernicus certainly wasn’t the first to propose moving the earth from the center, but his conception offered a thoroughgoing interpretation that gave people a paradigm to choose when leaping out of the earth-centered model.)

So, our leadership guidance in school and business can benefit from a look at physics and the history of ‘world concepts’. Let the consultant proudly sell “solutions” while you lead your team to grow in solving today’s problems, sometimes with the help of outside resources.

As leader, take your cues from the new problems which you find littering your way to a mission-building future. Let your vision seek insight into the new challenges which your team can be addressing each day.

Please, never settle for managing problems. Get annoyed that the same problems are sticking around, and determine to motivate and equip your team to clear those hurdles.

Even more than solving rather than managing problems, though, your drumbeat can be to find the new problems which arise because you are breaking new ground.