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How to jump-start solutions in hard to change situations

Broken windows are a safety risk, not only in the way you imagine. Malcolm Gladwell in his book ‘Tipping point’ sheds light on the broken windows theory, a very intriguing idea in the social sciences. It's about how certain environmental indicators cause some behaviors to thrive.

Here’s an excerpt from the Atlantic Monthly March 1882 article by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling:

“Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it is unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires. Or consider a pavement. Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of refuse from take-out restaurants there or even break into cars. “

Hence the importance of fixing broken windows. What if fixing other kinds of broken windows could fix bigger, more complex problems? Well, it can. That’s the notion behind Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg, of the Brief Family Therapy Center at Milwaukee ‘Solutions-focused therapy’.

Standard therapy takes time. Sometimes over tens of hours, and a lot of money spent, you discover that the true reason behind your self sabotaging actions in your romantic relationship today can be traced to your father. Then over the next few hours of therapy (spanning several weeks) you begin to fix that issue, nipping the problem at the bud.

But the solution therapist isn’t interested in all of that. Solution therapy doesn’t try to solve problems from the roots. The truth is humans are too complex. Another thing, psychological cause and effect systems are never so obvious. Solution therapy looks for that broken window and fixes it, hoping that this will improve the state of the neighborhood.

Chip and Dan Heath in Switch give an example of solution focused therapy at work. Imagine a couple with supposed irreconcilable differences who have decided to go for solution focused therapy. At some point during the therapy session, the therapist poses the ‘Miracle Question’ What sign would you see, in the morning upon waking up that would make you believe that this certain problem (your marriage) has been fixed? This typically elicits some vague response. It’s the duty of the therapist to be able to draw out a more specific response; to be able to establish what progress looks like. Once this is done, the next step is reaching a resolution to implement this appearance of progress.

Fake it till you make it, huh?

With solution focused therapy, instead of attempting to attack an overwhelming problem, we focus on a workable indicator; instead of cleaning up the entire neighborhood, we focus on sorting out the broken windows.

It may look like treating the symptoms. But that isn’t a bad thing…. Is it? Plus, in the vast interconnected maze which we call business today, that is welcome. Big data may also be viewed by an attempt to bypass typical cause and effect relationships. As long as we’re able to observe consistent strong correlation between two variables, it is not necessary to understand the causal relationship but to use its predictive ability for all its worth. For example, Google Flu Trends was at one point reported to predict regional outbreaks of flu up to 10 days before they were reported by the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), by observing search queries.

Why it works is understandable. Most problems we face are self perpetuating. Low employee moral may lead to high employee turnover, which leads to sales under-performance then eventually, lower morale. It’s all thoroughly interconnected. The broken window is an indicator of an unsafe environment, which in turn leads to more broken windows, making the environment more unsafe. The focus is on getting out of the rut, breaking the tailspin. And with focus on implementing the solution; starting a desirable cycle.

As humans, we tend to engage heuristics instead of assessing situations in entirety. For this reason, a good indicator in a bad situation is likely to make us feel like all is well, effectively breaking the situational rut in a master stroke. Imagine trying to tackle the poor sales example in the preceding paragraph, fixing the broken window of employee morale could sweetly solve the problem.

And if you’re still not convinced, you’ll do good to remember that Ebola virus disease (EVD) up until recently was only treated by adequate medical care and taking care of its various symptoms, and this is definitely better than leaving the patients resigned to fate. Treating the symptoms since we don’t have a cure.

It is no different from what scientist engage when using crystallization as a separation technique. For simplicity, suppose you have a solute (common salt) in solution (salt water), you could add a bit more salt to seed the solution. This extra salt then draws all the dissolved salt out of solution. The added salt jump-starts the separation process.

Root cause fixes are nice, but in a world where cause and effect relationships are excessively complicated you would do well with solution focused therapy.

Now that you’re interested, what do you do ?

While the temptation exists to uncover the 5 why’s of the current problem facing your company, you could look to apply the broken window fix.

1) What singular observation would you make that would make you believe that this problem is gone

2) Take steps to create this observable state.