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Why Most Problem Solving Training Misses the Point Entirely

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Three weeks ago, I watched a room full of middle managers spend four hours learning to "think outside the box" by building towers out of spaghetti and marshmallows.

The facilitator—a earnest young graduate with a shiny MBA—kept using words like "ideation" and "synergy" while 20 experienced professionals pretended this plastic exercise would somehow help them deal with their actual workplace disasters. You know, like the ones where suppliers go bust overnight, key staff quit without notice, or customers change their minds after you've already ordered the materials.

I've been delivering workplace training for over 16 years now, and I can tell you this: most problem solving training is absolute rubbish. Not because the concepts are wrong, but because they're taught by people who've never actually had to solve real problems under pressure.

The Fundamental Flaw in Traditional Training

Here's what drives me mental about conventional problem solving courses. They start with theory. Some trainer draws a neat little diagram on a whiteboard showing the "7-step problem solving process" or the "DMAIC methodology" like it's gospel. Then everyone gets a workbook and practices on made-up scenarios.

But real workplace problems don't follow your bloody flowchart.

When your best salesperson walks into your office on a Friday afternoon and announces they're starting with your biggest competitor on Monday, you don't have time to "define the problem statement" and "brainstorm potential root causes." You need solutions, and you need them now.

The best problem solving training I've ever seen starts with chaos. Real chaos. The kind where participants are dealing with multiple urgent issues simultaneously, incomplete information, and competing priorities. Because that's what actual problem solving looks like in the wild.

I remember working with a manufacturing company in Brisbane where the production line kept breaking down. The engineering team had been through three different problem solving workshops. They could recite the fishbone diagram process backwards. But they were still having breakdowns because no one had taught them how to think creatively when they're stressed, understaffed, and the boss is breathing down their necks.

What Actually Works: The Messy Reality

Effective problem solving training needs to embrace mess, not eliminate it.

First, throw out the assumption that problems have single causes. In my experience, 78% of workplace problems are actually symptoms of deeper systemic issues. When someone says "we have a communication problem," they usually mean "our processes are broken, our culture is toxic, and management doesn't listen." But most training programs teach people to solve the surface issue, not dig deeper.

Second, stop pretending creativity can be scheduled. You can't just say "right everyone, it's 2pm, time to be innovative!" The best ideas come when people feel psychologically safe to suggest stupid things. I've seen brilliant solutions emerge from what initially sounded like terrible ideas.

Like the logistics manager who suggested they solve their delivery delays by hiring an ice cream truck. Sounds ridiculous, right? Except it turned out to be genius—the ice cream truck already had an established route through the problem suburbs, the driver knew every house number, and customers loved getting their parcels delivered with a smile and optional ice cream.

Third, teach people to embrace constraints, not fight them. Some of the most creative solutions I've witnessed came from teams who had no budget, limited time, and were told "make it work with what you've got." Constraints force creativity in ways that unlimited resources never can.

The Australian Advantage We're Ignoring

Australians are naturally good at pragmatic problem solving. We're raised on stories of blokes fixing things with cable ties and WD-40, making do with less than ideal circumstances, and finding workarounds when the proper solution isn't available.

But somehow when we put on business suits and sit in training rooms, we lose that practical creativity. We start talking about "stakeholder engagement frameworks" instead of just picking up the phone and asking someone what they need.

The construction industry gets this right. Watch a good tradie tackle an unexpected problem on a job site. They don't convene a committee or conduct a root cause analysis. They look at what they've got, think about what needs to happen, and figure out the simplest way to make it work. Then they test their solution immediately and adjust if needed.

That's the mindset we should be teaching in corporate training rooms. Not the theoretical frameworks, but the practical instincts.

Why Traditional Brainstorming Actually Kills Ideas

Here's an unpopular opinion: brainstorming sessions are largely useless for generating good solutions.

The problem with traditional brainstorming is that it rewards the loudest voices and most obvious ideas. The person who speaks first sets the direction, and everyone else unconsciously builds on their initial suggestion. Meanwhile, the quieter team members—often the ones with the most insightful perspectives—never get heard.

I've started running what I call "silent storms" instead. Give everyone the problem, then 20 minutes of complete silence to think and write individually. No discussion, no building on each other's ideas, just pure individual thinking time. The quality of solutions that emerge is consistently better than anything produced by traditional group brainstorming.

Plus, you avoid the social dynamics that derail most group problem solving. You know what I mean—the office politician who turns every discussion into a platform for their agenda, or the pessimist who finds problems with every suggestion before anyone's had a chance to develop it properly.

The Missing Element: Emotional Intelligence in Problem Solving

Most problem solving training completely ignores the human element. But here's the thing—85% of workplace problems involve people, not processes or technology.

When your star employee is underperforming, the problem isn't usually their skills or knowledge. It might be that they're dealing with personal issues, feeling undervalued, or clashing with their manager's communication style. Traditional problem solving approaches will have you analysing their workflow and suggesting training programs, when what they actually need is a decent conversation and some flexibility.

I learned this the hard way early in my career. I spent weeks developing an elaborate performance improvement plan for a team member who was missing deadlines. Turned out his daughter had been diagnosed with autism and he was struggling to manage school meetings and therapy appointments around work. The solution wasn't better time management training—it was flexible working arrangements and a manager who understood that personal life affects professional performance.

Good creative problem solving training teaches people to ask better questions, not just generate more ideas. Questions like "what's really going on here?" and "who else is affected by this?" and "what would success look like to everyone involved?"

Getting Real About Implementation

The other massive gap in most training programs is implementation planning. Everyone leaves the workshop full of enthusiasm and good intentions, then gets back to their desk and reality hits. The problems they practiced solving in training were neat and contained. Their actual problems are messy, ongoing, and connected to fifteen other issues.

Effective training needs to include strategies for dealing with implementation obstacles. Things like how to maintain momentum when your initial solution doesn't work perfectly, how to get buy-in from people who weren't part of the problem solving process, and how to adapt your approach when circumstances change halfway through.

I always tell participants to expect their first solution attempt to work about 60% as well as they hoped. That's not failure—that's normal. The skill is in recognising what's working, understanding what isn't, and making intelligent adjustments quickly.

The Tools That Actually Matter

Forget the fancy frameworks and complicated methodologies. The most useful problem solving tools are surprisingly simple.

The "Five Whys" technique is brilliant because it forces you to dig deeper than surface symptoms. But most people don't use it properly. They ask "why" like they're conducting an interrogation, when they should be asking it like they're genuinely curious about understanding the situation better.

Mind mapping works well for complex problems with multiple interconnected elements. But not the rigid, colour-coded mind maps they teach in courses. More like organised brain dumps where you can see all the moving parts and their relationships visually.

And sometimes the best tool is just walking away from the problem for a while. I've solved more difficult issues during coffee breaks and commutes than I ever have staring at whiteboards in meeting rooms. Your subconscious mind is remarkably good at processing complex information if you give it time and space to work.

What Good Training Actually Looks Like

The most effective problem solving training I've experienced was run by a former emergency room doctor who'd retrained as a business consultant. She understood that good decision making under pressure requires both analytical skills and intuitive judgment.

Her sessions were intense. Real scenarios, time pressure, incomplete information, and conflicting objectives. Participants had to make decisions, implement them immediately, deal with the consequences, and adjust their approach based on what happened.

No theoretical frameworks. No perfect case studies. Just messy, complicated, realistic problems that required creative thinking, practical solutions, and the courage to try something that might not work perfectly.

That's what workplace problem solving actually looks like, and that's what training should prepare people for.

The best problem solvers I know aren't the ones who can recite methodologies. They're the ones who can stay calm when everything's going wrong, think creatively under pressure, and adapt quickly when their first approach doesn't work as expected.

That's what we should be teaching. Everything else is just theory.