One profound way in which you can market yourself in your work place is to present yourself as a problem solver. Let’s face it, at the very base level, the real reason for our employment is to solve problems on behalf of the organisation. This might sound simplistic, but the more problems we solve, the more valuable we are to the organisation. As numerous nations around the world approach recession because of COVID 19, civil strife in some parts and mismanagement of economies by others in government, as an employee in your small corner of the world, there really is little you can do about the environment. But you can work on yourself! Recessions present dire circumstances and situations for average employees. In a recession there are usually risks of unemployment because trade and manufacturing generally slow down. The reduced levels of economic activity normally lead to job loss. But if you have worked on repositioning yourself over time such that you become extremely valuable to your organisation, the probability of you being laid off is very slim.
The tragedy of improving ourselves as business people or executives in an organisation is that in most cases, most of us know what to do, but we do not do it.
In the work place, everyone can enhance his problem solving ability by having a broader perspective for defining problems. Why do we need to broaden our perspective? Well, naturally, every human has a tendency to view a problem from his own narrow perspective. What that means is our learning, or our professional calling tends to dominate our thoughts and psychology when we are handling issues. So, a lawyer who is faced with a problem will first and foremost look at the problem from the perspective of the law. Before he can help himself, he would begin to examine the legal framework of the situation at hand, whether it leads him to a solution or not. The same thing goes for an accountant, an administrator and even a Human Resources Management practitioner. All of these professionals will have their core competence in their professions coming to play whenever they are faced with a work based problem. So the overwhelming question arises: How do we broaden our perspective? Well, there are four basic things we can do in form of an exercise which will help us broaden our world view. One of the first things we can do is Rename the problem. When you rename a problem, it doesn’t necessarily mean you are shying away from solving it. Giving it a new name could give a new perspective to it and help in the proper definition. If I replace: “traffic congestion in a busy city” with: “hindered traffic flow”. Use of “traffic flow”slightly changes my perspective and enables me to look at how the traffic may begin to flow instead focusing on congestion. We can also Reformulate the problem in reverse. You can do an outside inside approach. What that means is whatever problem we are facing we look at it from a different perspective. If you work in an organisation that is experiencing peculiar situations, we start by looking at the problem from the outside perspective. How do people outside of the organisation see the problem? Sometimes, when you do that outside analysis, you get a completely different perspective. Another thing you can do is Open your mind! A lot of people work with a narrow or closed mind. What that means is our minds are limited to our own biases and preferences. Having an open mind means we are willing to broaden our perspective and consider other peoples’ opinions as well as multiple points of view.
Redefining a problem for a broader perspective can also be achieved by putting stuff into boxes. We ought to learn to compartmentalise an issue and break it down into smaller concepts. How do we do this? Speaking to a group of bank inspectors the other day, I asked them a general question: “Why do banks go bust?” The question refers to the financial state of a bank and what could lead to it going bankrupt. The first answer that comes to mind is, banks go bankrupt when the liabilities exceed assets. Now this is a general way of expressing it. Liabilities exceeding assets means that the bank can no longer function as a profitable entity, so it must be closed down. But the statement: liabilities exceeding assets could be further broken down into more “boxes”. A bank might go bankrupt for the following reasons: if the management is corrupt; if staff do not make the customers confident of their services; if the bank marketers channel their efforts towards the wrong group of people and of course, if the bank is unable to meet its profit targets due to limited ability of the staff. If we put each of these suggestions into a box then we are able to look at the problem of going bankrupt from numerous perspectives.
Redefining a problem for a broader perspective can also be achieved by putting stuff into boxes. We ought to learn to compartmentalise an issue and break it down into smaller concepts.
We have outlined four approaches to broadening our perspective in defining problems which would enable us suggest and even implement better solutions to problems. But there is one major mindset; we need to improve our performance generally. We need to focus on a higher standard in whatever we are doing. Raise your standards! We must practically, yearn for higher performance in all we do in the office or business environment. It’s not enough to yearn. Move from yearning to praticalising a higher standard. What do we need to do better? Most of us know the answers to that; the basic challenge is the ability to follow through and do it. The tragedy of improving ourselves as business people or executives in an organisation is that in most cases, most of us know what to do, but we do not do it. Make more calls; commit to speaking to more clients. One dentist who needed to improve his business drastically decided to take a novel course of action. He sat with his clients, asked them what kind of service they would like to patronise and how best he could deliver what they want to them. He specifically told them one on one that if there are parts of his service they do not like, they should not hesitate to let him know. The outcome of his painstaking meetings was tremendous. He was able to quadruple his income over a very short period. What do you need to do to raise your own standards?
*Ogundadegbe is a renowned management consultant. He trains managers and executives in the arts of Customer Service, Human Resources Management and Management strategy ([email protected]).
