How to Solve Problems Easier: The Secret Nobody Talks About in Corporate Training

Connect with us: SB Nation | DeviantArt | Medium | Quora | GitHub

Twenty-three years ago, I watched a senior manager spend four hours in a meeting trying to figure out why their Melbourne warehouse kept shipping wrong orders. Four bloody hours. The solution? Their picking list was printed in 8-point font and the warehouse lights were dim. Cost to fix: $47 for better bulbs and a printer setting change.

That's when I realised most people don't actually have a problem-solving problem—they have a problem-seeing problem.

The Real Issue with Problem-Solving Training

Here's what drives me mental about most communication training courses: they focus on tools and frameworks instead of the fundamental skill that matters most. Root cause analysis, fishbone diagrams, five whys technique—all useful, sure. But they're like teaching someone to use a microscope when they can't even focus their eyes properly.

The uncomfortable truth? Seventy-four percent of workplace problems aren't complex puzzles requiring MBA-level analysis. They're bloody obvious once you strip away the politics, assumptions, and fear of looking stupid.

I learned this the hard way during my early consulting days. Client after client would bring me in for "strategic problem-solving workshops" when what they really needed was someone to state the obvious without getting sacked for it.

Why Most Problem-Solving Fails (And It's Not What You Think)

The biggest barrier to effective problem-solving isn't lack of intelligence or training—it's social dynamics. People know what's wrong. They just can't say it.

Take this example from a Brisbane call centre I worked with last year. Customer satisfaction scores were tanking, response times were terrible, and management was considering outsourcing the whole operation. They'd spent months analysing call logs, customer feedback, and performance metrics.

The real problem? Their best customer service rep was a passive-aggressive nightmare who made new staff feel incompetent. Everyone knew it. Nobody would say it because she'd been there eight years and was the manager's favourite.

Sometimes the elephant in the room is actually an elephant.

The Australian Approach to Problem-Solving

We Australians have this brilliant cultural trait that's both our strength and weakness: we're natural BS detectors. We can spot problems a mile away, but we're also conflict-averse in professional settings. It creates this weird dynamic where everyone knows what's wrong but dances around it in meetings.

I've seen this play out in companies from Perth to Sydney. The maintenance crew knows exactly why the equipment keeps breaking down. The front desk staff know why customers get frustrated. The accounts team know why invoices are always late.

But instead of fixing the obvious stuff, we create committees to "investigate the situation" and "develop comprehensive solutions." Meanwhile, the simple fix sits there, waving its arms like a person trying to flag down a taxi in the rain.

The Three-Layer Problem-Solving Method

After two decades of watching organisations tie themselves in knots, I've developed what I call the Three-Layer Method. It's dead simple, which is probably why it works.

Layer One: What Everyone Already Knows

Start by asking: "What's the most obvious thing that's causing this problem?" Not the most sophisticated thing. Not the most politically acceptable thing. The most obvious thing.

Nine times out of ten, someone in the room knows exactly what it is. They're just waiting for permission to say it.

I remember working with a Newcastle manufacturing plant where productivity was down 30%. Management was talking about lean processes and workflow optimisation. The floor supervisor finally piped up: "The new safety procedure means we have to walk an extra 200 metres every time we need a tool."

Fixed it in two days.

Layer Two: What Nobody Wants to Admit

This is where professional development training usually gets interesting. Every organisation has sacred cows—processes, people, or policies that can't be questioned.

But here's the thing about sacred cows: they're usually the source of your biggest problems.

Maybe it's the monthly reporting process that takes 40 hours to produce information nobody reads. Maybe it's the open-plan office that's making everyone miserable but was expensive to implement. Maybe it's the "flat hierarchy" that really just means nobody has authority to make decisions.

The key is creating psychological safety for people to name these untouchables. I use a simple technique: frame it as a hypothetical. "If we were starting this company fresh tomorrow, what would we do differently?"

Layer Three: What You're Not Seeing

This is the deep stuff—the systemic issues, the unintended consequences, the emergent behaviours that nobody planned for.

But here's what I've learned: you can't see Layer Three clearly until you've addressed Layers One and Two. It's like trying to diagnose engine problems while the car's on fire.

The Psychology of Problem Avoidance

Let me tell you something that'll make you uncomfortable: most workplace problems persist not because they're hard to solve, but because solving them is inconvenient for someone with influence.

I worked with a Sydney logistics company where delivery delays were costing them major contracts. The problem was glaringly obvious—their dispatch system was from 1987 and crashed twice a day. But the IT manager had built his reputation on "maintaining stable legacy systems" and fought every modernisation attempt.

Three months and two lost contracts later, they finally upgraded. Problem solved in a week.

This happens everywhere. The training provider who oversells capacity. The department head who won't admit their hiring decisions were wrong. The executive who can't acknowledge that their pet project is a disaster.

It's not stupidity. It's perfectly rational self-interest. Which means your problem-solving process needs to account for it.

Making Problem-Solving Socially Safe

Here's where most organisations stuff up: they treat problem-solving as a purely analytical exercise when it's actually a social and political one.

You want people to identify problems honestly? Make it safe for them to do so. Not just "we encourage feedback" safe—actually safe.

I've found three things that work:

Anonymous Problem Identification: Give people a way to surface issues without attaching their name to them. A simple suggestion box. An anonymous survey. A "problems parking lot" where anyone can post concerns.

Solution-Focused Framing: Instead of "What's wrong with our customer service?" ask "What would amazing customer service look like here?" It's the same information, but psychologically safer to share.

Implementation Protection: The fastest way to stop people identifying problems is to automatically make them responsible for fixing them. "Great point, Sarah—you're now in charge of solving it." That's how you ensure Sarah never speaks up again.

Why Simple Solutions Get Overlooked

There's this weird business psychology where simple solutions are seen as less valuable than complex ones. Like we can't charge our problems appropriately unless the solution involves consulting fees and change management frameworks.

I call it "complexity bias"—the assumption that big problems require big solutions.

But think about some of the most effective business improvements you've seen. Better signage. Clearer instructions. More comfortable chairs. Fixing the coffee machine. Simple stuff that immediately improves everyone's day.

The best problem-solving often isn't about finding the perfect solution—it's about removing the dumb obstacles that shouldn't exist in the first place.

Tools That Actually Work (Not the Usual Suspects)

Forget the fishbone diagrams for a minute. Here are the problem-solving tools I actually use:

The Stupid Question Audit: Once a month, ask: "What processes do we follow that would sound insane to someone from outside our industry?" Fresh eyes see things differently.

The New Person Test: Every time someone new joins the team, ask them what seems weird or inefficient. They haven't been trained to ignore problems yet.

The Customer Shadow: Follow your product or service through the entire customer experience. Not as a manager or analyst—as a regular customer. You'll spot problems that never make it to your reporting dashboard.

The Emergency Bypass: When there's a crisis, what do you do differently? Which normal processes get skipped? Those are often the processes that aren't adding value in normal times either.

The Implementation Reality Check

Here's where I probably lose some readers: most problem-solving training focuses on identification and analysis but completely ignores implementation realities.

You can have the most brilliant solution in the world, but if it requires three different departments to coordinate, two system upgrades, and a culture change, it's not actually a solution—it's wishful thinking.

The best problem-solvers I know are obsessed with implementation feasibility. They ask unglamorous questions like: "Who has to approve this?" "What training is required?" "How do we measure success?" "What happens if it doesn't work?"

It's less exciting than root cause analysis, but it's what separates actual problem-solving from problem-identifying.

Building Problem-Solving Capability

If you want your team to get better at solving problems, stop sending them to generic problem-solving courses. Instead, focus on three specific capabilities:

Permission to State the Obvious: Train people to name simple solutions without apologising for them. "Maybe we just need better lighting" should be a valid contribution, not something to be embarrassed about.

Systems Thinking: Help people understand how changing one thing affects everything else. Not in a theoretical way—in a practical, "if we change this process, what happens to workload?" way.

Implementation Planning: Teach people to think through the actual steps required to implement their solutions. Make it part of the problem-solving process, not an afterthought.

When Problem-Solving Becomes the Problem

Here's a confession: I've worked with organisations that were so good at identifying problems they forgot to solve them.

They had sophisticated problem-tracking systems. Regular problem-solving meetings. Detailed root cause analyses. But somehow, the same issues kept appearing quarter after quarter.

Why? Because they'd created a culture of professional problem-discussion rather than problem-resolution.

The solution? Set arbitrary deadlines. "We're going to fix this by Friday, even if the solution isn't perfect." Sometimes good enough implemented is better than perfect analysed.

The Real Secret (Finally)

After all this, here's the actual secret to solving problems easier: treat problem-solving as a communication skill, not an analytical one.

The smartest person in the room isn't always the best problem-solver. The person who can get others to share information honestly, who can build consensus around solutions, and who can navigate the politics of implementation—that's your problem-solving superstar.

Most problems aren't hiding because they're complex. They're hiding because someone's afraid to name them, or because the person who knows the solution doesn't feel heard, or because the obvious fix threatens someone's territory.

Fix the communication, and the problems often solve themselves.

Which brings me back to that Melbourne warehouse. The real problem wasn't the lighting or the font size—it was that nobody had asked the warehouse staff what they needed to do their job better. Once we started that conversation, solutions appeared everywhere.

Sometimes the best problem-solving tool is just listening.

---

Looking to improve your team's problem-solving capabilities? Effective communication training forms the foundation of every successful problem-solving initiative. Because the best solutions mean nothing if you can't implement them together.