Chapter 8. Coach as Problem Solver

I used to solve problems for teams. All the time. I was greatly rewarded for doing so. In fact, I was rewarded not only for solving the problems of the day but for looking ahead and solving problems I thought were coming even though they hadn’t happened yet. We called it issues and risk management. People said I was a great project manager because I could solve all kinds of problems, and in a plan-driven world, having a project manager who was also a good problem solver proved essential. When one holds on to a plan so tightly, one must keep reality at bay, or at least “solve for it.”

Some common situations of the past illustrate this. My program manager tells me she has just accepted a huge change request with no corresponding change to the client’s delivery expectation. “Solve for it,” she says. My client tells me that my team misunderstood the specification, and we should have known better, even though the new understanding means a lot more work that we don’t have the skills to perform. When I go to my boss for help, she simply says, “Solve for it.” Two team members don’t see eye to eye about the order in which we have planned to build the system. They come to me to complain and then expect me to “solve for it.” After a while, I found myself making decisions for the team and solving more and more problems that they should have been able to solve themselves. Somehow, I became central. People could not function unless I “solved for it.”