Imagine a peace summit called to resolve some ancient conflict. The delegates are people with deep, personal experience of the issues and an encyclopaedic understanding of the what, why and how of the problem.
Ultimately, the summit will achieve bugger all beyond a press release and a few non-binding resolutions, because the folks who know how we got into the problem don’t always know how we’re going to get out of it.
KNOWLEDGE on its own, isn’t enough. It’s just one of four keys that problem solvers need to unlock any problem.
The second key is DISTANCE from the problem. It’s what gives you much needed objectivity and clarity, a little room to stand back and get a good look at what you’re dealing with, so get yourself some minds that are somehow removed from the problem.
TIME is the third key. Big problems need the kind of care and attention that almost no-one seems to have these days, so you have to somehow make the effort, which means making the time.
Of course, none of that’s much use without the final key: OPTIMISM, and plenty of it. Find people with the kind of industrial-strength optimism that believes there’s a great solution to be found, if we just look hard enough. Only a handful of optimists find the answers they’re looking for, but fortunately, that’s usually enough.
So now you know the four keys to any solution: Knowledge, Distance, Time and Optimism.
Want to open a problem up to solutions? First you have to find your keys.
Jason
I’m not sure I understand what this comment means (I’m not even certain that it’s a genuine comment) but I’m going to take it as an opportunity to clarify my thoughts on the second of the problem solver’s keys, Distance. I would argue that passion is useful once you’ve determined a clear course of action and that emotional energy is a great fuel supply if you know where you’re going. But passion is the exact opposite of Distance, which is what you need to understand the underlying causes of whatever problem you’re trying to solve; as Benjamin Franklin said: ‘Let passion drive you, but let reason hold the reigns.’ Far from being a solution, I see passion as a cause (or at least an accelerator) of many of the problems we face right now. And if you’ve ever had the chance to interview the inmates of a maximum security prison (as I have) you might already suspect that passion (anger, envy, lust, greed, fear etc) is what landed them in jail in the first place. Thoughts?
dave isles
passion will strive for a win-lose solution.. will inhibit compromise….
distance reveals the big picture, where both sides need to give and take a bit..
so send in the wise owls, not the champion debaters!
cheers..
Jason
You’ve started me down another line of thought; what do you make of this:
Passion is the lack of distance from one’s own emotions. In order to understand the entire problem I need distance from myself; how I FEEL about anything may not be the most important part of the puzzle.