Understanding "solutions"

Learning takes a lifetime

I came to Solution Focus late via various milestones along the way, including 

• Quality Management - particularly continuous improvement (more here). This works well for those phenomena in which cause and effect are consistent over time and place
• Complexity... encountered while completing a PhD and 
• Solution Focus - more here. This works well where the relationship between cause and effect are not consistent over time and place...that is, when the outcomes are emergent

It is all very well to be focused on solutions but "solutions" are not always well understood.

Misunderstanding solutions 

For many years, as a teacher and Principal, I was good at resolving unhappy everyday situations, particularly those involving poor student behaviour. I was able to come up with "solutions" that enabled those involved to get back to teaching and learning... our core business.

But then I (finally) realised that I was coming up with "solutions" involving the same students in the same same situations every day or so. While I was 'resolving' the situations I was NOT producing a genuine long term solution that made my involvement unnecessary.  I needed to understand that what I was doing was actually 're-work' (waste) before the light came on for me.

What are solutions?


Firstly, "real solutions" do more than simply resolve current problems.  They also reduce the likelihoods that the problem will recur in the future; and if the problem does recur then it will be easier to resolve it next time.

In addition, genuine solutions are changes that make it easier for people to

• Know know what is happening
• Work together to improve what is happening
• Do their work really well 

They also reduce the need for counter-measures and rework

About counter-measures

While counter-measures may be necessary in the short term they represent low order "solutions" since they consume additional resources and have to repeated. For example, supervision, control, checking, repairing errors, redoing tasks... are all forms of waste. These activities are not really doing the core work. 

In contrast, real solutions are productive and sustainable, in that solutions

• make it easier to do better, and thus
• release resources for important activities, and also
• reduce waste and the need for rework by making sustainable improvements.