Construction Trailblazers: Paving The Way to Excellence

Come To Me With Solutions, Not Problems
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[00:00:00] Have you ever told your team, come to me with solutions, not problems, and then wondered why they still bring you more problems than answers? Let's talk about why that happens and how to fix it. Welcome to Construction Trailblazers Paving the Way to Excellence, the podcast where we cut through the noise to uncover what truly drives success in the building industry.

I'm Samantha C. Prestige, your guide in simplifying operations and turning dynamic teams into industry leaders. We're all about embracing a people focused, tech forward, lean practice that reshapes the trajectory of a company, boosting revenue while freeing owners and teams from daily firefighting. So, if you're ready to create a team that consistently delivers success, then you're in the right place.

Explore our past episodes at ConstructionTrailBlazers. com and start your journey to excellence. All right, so this [00:01:00] phrase, come to me with solutions, not problems, is something I hear so often in a variety of teams in all industries, but very commonly in the construction industry. And what happens is we end up getting frustration on both sides, the managers and the employees.

So, as a manager, you end up feeling overwhelmed. Because you are in all of the problem solving, your team does not seem capable of solving problems on their own. And so you are always pulled in dragged into figuring out how to solve this problem. Then on the employee side, Your team feels unprepared, unsupported, and they're expected to provide solutions when they really have no guidance or any idea of what the ideal solution looks like.

So the intent behind the phrase of come to me with solutions, not problems is good. There is great intention on wanting to encourage problem solving and critical thinking on your team and to be able to delegate [00:02:00] critical thinking, but the execution so often falls short. We're going to explore really why does that happen and how can you actually help your employees to become better problem solvers so that you can delegate that level of critical thinking and be able to focus on problem solving those higher level issues.

When we look at why this approach falls short, you think, hey, if I tell them to think of solutions, then they're just going to go ahead and think of solutions, right? They're going to understand that my expectation is to not hear the problems and they're going to come up with solutions. That's pretty much what that logic would be if you only tell them to come to me with solutions and don't provide further support.

What's happening here is that you are assuming that the team or a specific employee already has the necessary skills or knowledge to identify solutions. This will kind of get into the weeds a little bit on the type of people that you're hiring. We did have an episode a few weeks back [00:03:00] that looked at when should you hire for technical skills versus soft skills.

We'll make sure that that's linked in the show notes. Yes, ideally you're hiring people that are able to think critically and to think ahead and already know how to think big picture. Ideally you're doing that. Often, though, that big picture thinking is unique to the company, and you can't just assume that that employee already has those skill sets.

Yeah, if you've hired someone at a supervisor, management, or some kind of leadership level, they should have these skill sets, but if we're talking about frontline employees, this is most likely something that has not been developed in them, either within your team or previous teams, and we need to build this skill set up.

Additionally, when you just tell them to come to you with solutions and not problems, it can create this kind of fear or insecurity about bringing up problems if they don't have a perfect solution. And since they likely don't have the skill set [00:04:00] to come up with that perfect solution, then they're just not bringing up problems to you.

We still want to be encouraging open communication because whether or not they know how to solve the damn problem, we need to know about the problem. So we don't want to discourage them and make them feel insecure. When a problem does come up, we want to make sure that those lines of communication are always open, no matter what.

And then the last thing here is that you aren't providing actual guidance on how to find a solution. You're just telling them that they need a solution. You're not providing the framework or the parameters of what a perfect solution would look like, or, you know, what's the thought process of how to think through this problem and understand the impacts of a solution.

You're just telling them to do something without the process or without the guidance on how to actually do that. If you've followed me at all, then you know I'm all about processes. Everything has a process, no matter how complex it is, there's a [00:05:00] simple framework that we can find. And that is true even in this type of soft skill.

skill nature. Even in the complexity of critical thinking and solving a problem, there's a process that we can go through, a thought process, and we need to teach our employees how to think through that. And this, this frustrating dynamic can happen not just within a team, but it can also happen across departments.

Something that I have seen often with my clients is this type of dynamic happening between operations and project managers and then the accounting team. So the accounting team typically, they're the dot your I's, cross your T's team. They want that, those details to all line up perfectly as they should, their accountants, right?

However, they're usually just finding the problems and then it's on the project managers to solve it or to figure out really what the impact of that problem is. And I heard this with a client recently where the accounting team brings up an issue in a meeting. They might be saying like, Hey, this, this project [00:06:00] looks like it's going over budget or some issue that is going to Greatly impact a project and then that's it.

That's all the information they provide and the project managers then have to figure out Hey, do you need extra details to solve this problem or really what's the short term and long term impacts of this? There's no collaboration for problem solving. It's just One team has provided the problem and the other team is now stuck with the problem and expected to solve it.

I mean, usually if there's an accounting issue on a project, you need to get that shit in order rather quickly, right? Because then we're affecting cash flow and profitability across the board in the company. So the issue here is, well, first off, the project managers don't have any authority over the accounting department to require that they solve problems, but they're still just groaning about the fact that, that the accounting team is not really providing solutions, they're not really providing any guidance, they're just coming up with the problem.

And so, this is not just something that happens between [00:07:00] supervisors and their direct reports, but this is something that happens across teams, across departments, and we need to find a way to encourage that big picture problem solving and the collaboration, understanding how one thing affects something else.

How exactly do you do that? Because big picture thinking and critical thinking, often that sounds like something that you can't teach. This is something that someone just naturally has and you just want to hire the natural A plus star employee, when in reality this is something that you can teach and you can develop this in your employees.

So to teach big picture thinking there's three components that the employee or team will need to understand and then there is you actually modeling and collaborating with them to think through this thought process of solving a problem. Those initial three components with big picture thinking are going to include the customer, the [00:08:00] company, And the domino effect.

What are the impacts? So first off, employees have to understand what the voice of the customer is. This is one of those textbook things in the lean world that I will never get away from. There's a lot of textbook things where I'm like, hey, this is, theory over real application, but when it comes to voice of the customer, this is theory and textbook that actually applies to a lot of circumstances.

So we've got to understand, what does the customer care about? What do they need, want, and expect from us in every stage of a project, in everything we do, whether it's just how the office does something or the accounting team does something. Anything that could possibly impact a project, we have to understand how the customer will perceive that.

So if your employees don't understand who are the customers that you're serving and what they need, want, and expect, they're never going to get anywhere with big picture thinking. Take some time to really break down this voice of the [00:09:00] customer so they understand that customer's thoughts and also how they might perceive something.

Because a lot of times in customer service, perception is what drives any results or any outcomes of a situation, sometimes over what really happened, right? So how is the customer going to perceive this impact on the project, this solution? Next, what are the company's goals and values? When we can understand what is the company trying to achieve, really, what does my manager care about, what does their manager's managers care about, then I can start to understand, okay, how would they think through this problem?

What would they likely say yes or no to? And really, what do they care about? That's also just kind of looking at internal voice of the customer here, but understanding the company's goals and values. So that second priority after the customer's perception first, and then the next thing is to really understand what Who is [00:10:00] involved?

Who is impacted by this? This is critical, especially when we're looking at cross department things or just breaking down silos. We want to understand who are the stakeholders in this problem. Is it just the field crew? Is it going to also end up being subcontractors if we have a problem with our scheduling?

Is it going to be the accounting department because now they've got to follow up more on some outstanding payments? Or is it the office manager because now they've got to do some more? Customer service calls or something. Who is impacted by these things? Who are all the stakeholders in this problem? And that's what we're looking at that domino effect.

If this one thing happens, what else will happen? What will changing this thing to solve a problem, how will that influence other things and what dominoes might fall? Your employees need to understand customer perception experience company goals and values, and then who all is involved in something to really start to understand that [00:11:00] big picture critical thinking.

From there, then you want to actually coach them through this. You want to collaborate with them and walk them through what does actually solving this problem look like? Because if they've never received guidance from you before and it's always just been they provide the problem, you solve the problem, then they have no idea of your expectations when it comes to problem solving and what are your expectations when it comes to implementing a solution.

So you've got to model this for them before they're really able to do it on their own and you're able to delegate problem solving. A few things I would do here. are really focused on inspiring curiosity with your employees and walking them through your thought process. So if they are coming to you with a solution that is disappointing, that's not an effective solution, then talk to them about the why there.

Say, Hey, This would be a good solution if X, Y, Z didn't matter. If we were [00:12:00] to do this, then that's going to impact this and make this other thing harder. Whatever it is, whatever that thought process is, whatever the dominoes are that they did not think through before, walk them through that and then explain a better solution and why that solution is better.

comes down to that why, understanding why did I get this wrong and why is this the correct answer. If they're not coming to you with solutions quite yet and it's just they're focused on the problem, they're really not understanding how to come up with a solution in the first place, then just prompt some questions.

What are the impacts if we don't solve this problem? What would this look like in an ideal situation? To avoid this problem, what should we have done differently? What can you do? What's in your control? Or just the, what are you going to do about it? So for instance, when my kid comes to me and they break a toy, there are times where, okay, yes, this is, it's a [00:13:00] complex way to fix this toy.

I'll go ahead and fix it for them. There's other times where it's a rather simple fix. And so I will pose to my toddler or my five year old, okay, what do you want to do about it? Do you want to throw it away? Or do you want to try to find a way to fix this? and have them think through that. And that is how they're going to start critically thinking.

So now there's times where they break a toy, they fix it on their own before they even come to me. And it's the exact same concept that we can apply with our employees and their teams. So if employees are not coming to you with solutions, even after you've provided the framework of customer experience, company goals, and the stakeholders involved, the domino effect of things, if they're still not coming to you with solutions, then just be blunt with them, be direct.

What do you want to do about this? How would you solve this? And just see what they come up with and then coach them through the rest of that thought process. So this is a huge mindset shift for employees. It will take time. It's not going to happen overnight. This is [00:14:00] not only changing your leadership and management style with them.

It's also now changing the culture or dynamic of your department. Or if you were looking at cross departments like those project managers in that accounting team, then we're also looking at a cultural shift across the company. So just understand that, know that it's going to take some time, you've got to be patient, you've got to lead with this compassionate communication style.

And really lean into collaboration here. Really lean into, okay, eventually I'll be able to delegate this problem solving. Eventually I won't be in the weeds. That's the long term goal. Let me stick with this so that we can get to that finish line. Hopefully you found this helpful today on how to encourage your employees to think critically and to solve problems on their own.

If you have your own story about having your employees come to you with solutions and not problems, then we'd love to hear it. You can reach out to us at hello at constructiontrailblazers. com. You might be our next [00:15:00] guest spotlight. Thanks for listening.