There’s an old story about an executive who has just been promoted to a leadership position. Wanting to make a positive impact, the leader convened several meetings with his new direct reports around one question: “What problems do we need to address?”
Initially, the staff wasn’t aware of many problems on the team. Wanting to follow instructions, they came to the next meeting with a short list of minor issues. When one person spoke up, another followed with their own list. With each meeting, the staff identified more problems, and the executive built the agenda around discussing them.
By the third month in his new role, the executive was disillusioned. More time was required to address the growing list of problems. The normal one-hour staff meeting had expanded to two hours. What had begun as mild irritations evolved into gut-wrenching complaint sessions, with the team getting lost in the weeds of every issue.
Before the executive arrived, the staff reported very little dissatisfaction with their work. On the whole, they enjoyed their relationships and worked well together. Once the executive shifted everyone’s attention to problems and what was wrong, however, the staff began looking for what wasn’t working and what needed to be fixed.
Problems become like glue. The more we focus on them, the stickier they get.
The world will never run out of problems competing for your attention. Every day there is another headline, another conflict, another crisis demanding your focus. If we are not intentional, our minds become magnets for what is wrong.
In TED* (The Empowerment Dynamic®), there is a foundational concept we call FISBE. The “F” stands for Focus, the “IS” for Inner State, and the “BE” for Behavior. In short, what we focus on creates an inner state (our emotions), and our behavior is a response to those emotions. It is a simple but profound way of understanding how our human operating system functions.
The story of the executive is a perfect example of how FISBE works in everyday life when leaders believe their primary job is to fix problems. When he focused on problems, the staff experienced an inner state of anxiety, and their insecurities and complaints (behavior) grew.
To please the new executive, the staff shifted their attention to problems and came to each meeting with an ever-growing list of what wasn’t working. It became a self-reinforcing cycle, with each person finding more problems to contribute.
Creativity and innovation are almost impossible in the heavy emotional state created by constantly focusing on what is wrong. Problems absolutely must be addressed. But in the problem mindset, they are addressed because of the anxiety people feel about them—not because of the problems themselves.
The core delusion is that we tell ourselves, “I’m just trying to fix this problem,” when in reality we are reacting to the uncomfortable feelings the problem creates within us.
In the outcome mindset, the focus is entirely different. People discern which problems need to be solved because solving them moves them closer to the outcome they want to create. They intentionally say yes to those issues and stop spending energy on problems that do not move them toward their desired outcome.
What if the new executive had asked a different set of questions?
“What do you like about your work and your relationships? What makes this team successful? What support do you need to grow and fulfill our mission and purpose?”
The staff’s focus would have centered on what they wanted to create. That positive focus would have generated an inner state of appreciation, excitement, and passion for one another and for the work they were doing together. Their conversations would then have been positioned to address problems in service of creating the outcomes they envisioned.
The problem mindset is really an anxiety management system rather than a problem-solving approach. When anxiety becomes the focus, people gradually lose sight of what they want to create together, and problems stick around much longer than they need to. As I wrote in a previous blog, where your focus goes, your energy flows.
Creators do not ignore problems. They simply refuse to let problems determine their focus. Instead, they continually return to more powerful questions:
What do we want to create? What do we care about?
Once that is the focus, a second question naturally follows:
What problems do we need to solve to move us closer to that outcome?
That single shift in focus changes everything.
Until next time, here’s to the Creator in you.
Donna
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