Since the role of a consultant is to advise and solve problems, it is almost a revealed truth that one of the first questions to the client should be “What problem are you trying to solve?” And while I don’t want to suggest solving problems isn’t part of the job, I do propose that this question actually limits our ability to do develop the optimal solution. What we need to to be raising up the context of process improvement, not focusing it into a narrow solution space of metrics control and whack-a-mole.
Instead of asking “What problem are you trying to solve?”, I suggest starting the conversation with “What are you trying to do?”
The reason I say this is that asking about problems usually speaks to symptoms, not root issues. It is, in essence, asking for a list of observations that the client wants changed. Unfortunately, changing those observations may do little to address the systemic issues which underpin those observations and may not further the mission of the unit or organization. As a result, you may remove the symptom, but not relieve the pain or improve the condition. Once you are deep into the specifics from the beginning, you lose the ability to gather context to better understand how to solve this problem.
Several years ago I was working with at large HR unit which, as is so typical, was getting complaints about how long it took to hire employees. So when I asked what their problem was, the answer was that it takes too long to hire employees and we need it to be faster. While it was true that their time-to-hire metrics were dreadful, as we dug in, we uncovered that many of the classic interventions might actually make their real issue worse, and that was that they were losing out on top talent. Certainly the time-to-hire was a contributing factor to this (candidates had multiple offers and weren’t waiting around for months), but it wasn’t the whole picture. Once we shifted the conversation from developing a process which would speed up the hiring process to designing one which would attract and acquire top talent, a much richer solution design was available. It turned out that the process we were speaking to was not “hiring”, but instead “Top talent identification and acquisition”. By broadening the context to that larger end-to-end proces, there were dozens of process improvement opportunities which helped throughout the talent acquisition space. And yes, it also did speed up the process.
So while we will never stop solving problems, let’s start with asking our clients “What are you trying to do?”