Are You Solving the Right Problem?

Anita Brick: Hi, this is Anita Brick and welcome to CareerCast at Chicago Booth. To help you advance in your career. Today we're delighted to be speaking with Kristen Cox. She's the author of a very intriguing book, Stop Decorating the Fish, and is the former executive director of the Governor's Office of Management and Budget for the State of Utah. Previously, she served on the cabinet for three governors and as a presidential appointee within the federal government during the Bush administration. In addition, Kristen consults with other states on how to improve performance. She has won numerous awards and recognitions, including Governing Magazine's Public Official of the Year for 2016.

Kristen, thank you so much for making the time. And sometimes we all get into a little trouble because we solve the wrong problem, which is really what the whole book, and I think, your whole take on things is about.

Kristen Cox: We're all bombarded with a million different things we could do every day.There's lots of interesting ideas out there, but the proposition we're making is that most problems actually aren't worth solving. And if we do have limited time and attention and resources, we actually have to be pretty deliberate about what problem we go chasing and finding and solving. But most of the stuff out there, just new ideas, new tools, and they're very distracting. We're really committed to helping people think a little bit differently about what problem they go after.

Anita Brick: That really is the very first question that came from a Booth MBA student, and she said: “My organization and I are in the midst of working to solve multiple challenges. What advice would you have on where to start?”

Kristen Cox: So I get this a lot, and it sounds like an easy answer, but it's not as easy as one may think. A problem is only a problem within the context of a goal. Imagine Chuck Yeager, back in 1947, a goal of traveling faster than the speed of sound. Not till they had that goal. They couldn't understand what would block them from achieving that goal. They started to go faster and faster, and they found the faster they went, they would hit something called the sound barrier, dragging the plane down, creating a lot of instability. They didn't even detect their problem until they understood their goal.

This is so common, but it happens in private sector and government. We don't know what our goal is. We use vague terms or very inward focus, increase profitability, which are important and necessary, but they're not sufficient. And when we really want to have a sustainable business that provides value for our customer, we've got to get really clear on what is the goal we're trying to achieve. What's the value we want to give to our customers? I mean, in government, you know, we want to help reduce recidivism in the prison system by X percent. When we start doing that, we have the first step in starting to uncover what the real problem is.

Anita Brick: This next question also from an MBA student. I find this to be a very common thing. Also an incredibly frustrating thing. “Hi Kristen, I am on a great team with smart and diligent individuals. We've been working on a persistent problem that we have quote unquote solved multiple times. Our positive results are fleeting. What do we do? Help!”

Kristen Cox: Oh, I love this guy. So we are enamored. Sometimes by change. We can fall into the trap. And obviously, you know, it sounds like this is what's happening in this organization, that because we're making change, we think we're making progress. And the whole focus of this book is learning to tease out real progress versus the illusion of progress. The illusion of progress is we launch a new initiative, we buy a new piece of technology. We launched a whole new data integration platform. We have a new brand, and we may get marginal improvements. We may get a fleeting improvement, as he saw. But if we don't really go after the real problem, we will continue to get this illusion of progress. Fleeting results, marginal impacts, 2% improvement, small profitability. We're in red ocean still. We can't compete with the competitors. We're just in a cost war. When we focus on the problem, we can start to see sustainable results. But it will challenge us to think very differently than what we thought in the past about how we approach things. Just because everyone's doing it doesn't mean we should.

In the book, we talk about what's called the seductive seven. These traps people fall into. They give us the illusion of progress. And if we can avoid those seven things and say those are not the answer, it'll start forcing us to think a little deeper about what the real issue is.

Anita Brick: So you have a list–this came from an alum–“you have a list of seven things that could be the wrong thing to do.” Like you said, they could be the illusion of making progress. “However, depending on how they're used, they could be exactly what is needed. What type of framework can someone use to decide whether you invest in the resources or not?” And it's everything from more money to re-orgs to training and development to technology and the list goes on. And on. But how do you decide? Because in and of themselves, those aren't necessarily bad things. And so how do you decide whether they are to come up with a better outcome or an illusion?

Kristen Cox: That is a very insightful question, because we use the word seductive by design, because they actually can be part of the solution, but they're tactical, they're tools. That's all they are. Technology is a tool, and if we use a tool, we have a specific purpose. If I use a hammer, I know I'm putting a nail on the wall. Being really clear that these are tools, not the solution, we can then treat them accordingly.

Let me give you an example. We're in an environment where we have more data than we've ever had in our organizations, and it can almost be so much data. It's very distracting. It becomes a lot of noise, creates a lot of noise in our systems. An example is we had a bunch of people with great intentions come together and say, hey, we want to build an integrated data system for the whole judicial system and the prison system, all these people going into prison, and we want to collect all this data so that we all can have shared information about these people. People started building up their servers and their data protocols and this huge thing. And it sounded great, a massive data thing to help with this court judicial process and people in prison.

But the real thing to figure out is, what's that right question to ask? Breakthroughs always begin with what's the question to ask? Just because I have data, that doesn't help me. What's the question I'm trying to answer by using the data. And when you look at all the people and all the stakeholders in this huge system, and the first question is, should the person go to prison or see the person be rehabilitated in the community? That decision ties up tons of money in the prison system, where people usually get sometimes worse, or they're in the community where it's not as expensive, but there's risk.

That question is a judicial decision. When we knew that that was the question, then we could organize and prioritize the data to help the judge have all the information substance abuse, mental health, past felonies, family situations. Have it when they make the sentencing decision, then you can actually start organizing your data accordingly. So it always starts with what's the question I'm trying to answer? What's the goal I'm trying to achieve? And when I can get those things lined up, I can start understanding how to use technology when a reorganization would work, because again, they're tools.

Anita Brick: Okay, there was another question by another student: “Hi Kristen, I am intrigued by your approach.” And this goes really right along with what you were talking about. “With this in mind, how do you suggest formulating questions that lead to better solutions and better outcomes?”

Kristen Cox: You got smart students. I'm kind of enamored by that whole question about asking the right question. If I can share something personal, I need a if that's okay and the impetus and why I feel so passionate about this. But so I am blind, which doesn't matter here nor there, other than when I was going blind in the late teens early 20s. Those were what I call my dark years, some some hard years of transition. I was on welfare at the time, didn't think I'd ever be able to work. I think that informs why I feel so passionate about organizations actually delivering value and not just talking interesting ideas. But I had a mentor who was blind, one of the most brilliant men I ever knew, and he helped me understand that my blindness was just a characteristic. And it's because he asked the right question. He was really willing to buck all social stereotypes, and he challenged me by asking me the question about what does blindness really mean? Does that mean you can't use your brain? Your hands? Work with other people? All blindness means is you have to get information a different way. And when you started challenging me on what does blindness really prevent you from doing? And are there other ways to access information other than your eyes? That question started to change how I thought about blindness.

This thing about mindset is so key because formulating the right question begins with challenging every assumption that's blocking us from achieving the goal. Asking the right questions is, do you have the mindset to question the status quo? So if you're in the private sector and you want to have a breakthrough solution, one of the questions is what value–value is created by removing a significant limitation in a way that was not possible before, in a way that's difficult for a competition to replicate. If I'm looking at a consumer, one of my first questions is going to be what's a limitation that's blocking them from doing something that's really important in their life, with very often asked questions based off what we think is possible, and then we live within the existing constraints. Really good questions are what doesn't exist today. We assume we can find the solutions, we can break obstacles, but we have to free our mind to think at a different level and be willing to ask those difficult questions. That's just so fundamental in this journey.

Anita Brick: I agree, and I love asking questions, which is probably why I enjoy having podcasts like this.

Yes, but here is a question that came. It is a really tricky one: “Hi Kristen, how do you question assumptions when they are related to a pet project of a senior leader who holds significant power?”

Kristen Cox: That's hard right? I worked for three governors. Fortunately, I've had really good governors, but it is hard when your boss may see things differently. We always say, oh, people resist change. They don't want their ID to be threatened or not. Let's step back from that a little bit. Most of us are willing to challenge assumptions if we think it's in our benefit, if we think we're going to get something out of it. When we think we're going to lose something, we actually may be hesitant.

So if we believe that's the case, when you look at your boss's project, I think the questions to help ask are simply these: what's the benefit for this project? Okay, usually managers are usually in love with our ideas, right? We love our ideas. We're trying to sell them. Make sure that you understand your boss's idea. That's great.

But the other question to ask is what's the risk of this change? What could go wrong so that we're helping the boss be successful? And also serving these ideas? Two more questions I would ask is what do we lose by making this change. That usually in organizations the thing that holds people back. The fear of what I have now, that's really good, really beneficial, this change, I'll have to give it up. Reorganization. We reorganize. I have to give up my title, my office. That's an example. We have to help surface that for the boss so the boss can get buy-in. If all the employees are saying, look, I'm going to have to give this up for the change. This is a way to serve your boss. Let's help your boss be more successful in his or her pet project. And it may not be beneficial, but if you surface the right questions, you hopefully get him or her to think about these on their own.

And the final question is if we don't make the change, what's the downside? Those are actually four questions we ask a lot when we're trying to get buy into a solution. The benefit of the change, the risk of the change. What's the bad thing that will give up if we change? And what's the risk if we don't change? We can approach people, their ideas to serve them, to help them. We may have it wrong. There's some humility that goes in this. It's always about what can we give? Not what do we get if we can give and serve our boss, our colleagues, in helping them understand what the limitations are of their current project? At least for me, that's been a starting place.

Anita Brick: Well, that's a really good point. Along with that, an alum said, she said: “In your career, how have you effectively evaluated conflicting advice from internal and external experts?” Because sometimes people like bring people in and they have internal committees and their cross-functional teams. People are bringing in all different kinds of ideas based on their own mindset and perspective and where they fall and how they answer those four questions you just shared. How do you manage the conflicting thoughts and recommendations of experts?

Kristen Cox: So here's my experience again, having worked with legislators and governors and private sector groups. There's always differing opinions. For me, the term expert comes the high standard, meaning you've actually had experience applying theory in a very messy world. Just names or titles or degrees is a starting place. But for me, people have actually had to demonstrate results.

We usually in these examples fight over the action, one expert said. Do this. Another expert said, do that and we feel conflicted. We feel torn in going in two directions. We don't know which one to trust. But if we step back and we say, wait, what's the need? This expert's opinion is trying to facilitate, let's take health care. Controversial topic in this country. One side says we have to expand health care. Another side says we can't afford to do it. I'm oversimplifying this. Look, I manage the Medicaid budget. I get this issue. When we can step back from the expert opinions and understand what is the need they're trying to fulfill. We actually have to set ourselves up for a higher standard. How do we create a solution that makes it so we can live within our budget and be fiscally prudent, because we have a lot of other needs to fulfill and make sure people have access to health care.

Now, that means the experts just can't sit on their opinion and double down on it. You actually now have to figure out the question to answer, how do I do both of those? Innovation happens when we set a different standard of the criteria we use to evaluate a solution. Sitting on one side and doubling down and justifying a narrow opinion is shortsighted, and usually we'll have a half baked solution. So that's my experience with these conflicting opinions. Step back, tone down the emotion, understand the need, and set very specific success criteria. The solution isn't successful unless these legitimate needs are met.

Anita Brick: So along with that, when you think about measuring success, sometimes people measure success when they're solving the wrong problem. A student asks: “How do you measure success if you might be solving the wrong problem?”

Kristen Cox: Well, that's a really good question. Tell me how you measure me and I will tell you how I behave. That's a quote from actually Dr. Eli Goldratt. How we measure people significantly impacts their behavior and what they do. It's just huge. We know this. Getting the measures right in the beginning is really key so that we don't incentivize the wrong change.

If I'm in a private sector company and I'm managing quarterly growth as my goal, that's going to incentivize all my employees to take one set of behaviors. If I have a longer term perspective, which is to actually create value for my customer, you can see the sales go up because the product’s actually valuable, but it's a longer term horizon. I'm going to incentivize different behavior. So getting the measures right up front is essential because they'll help filter out bad changes. If I'm working with an organization and they have an ambitious target and I see this all the time, I'll see it in health care, people believe that medical inflation is inevitable. Health care costs are inevitable. The most we can get is a 2 to 5% impact on our margins.

That mindset, those measures by itself will force us into bad change. When we set measures and targets that force us to go outside of our existing understanding, you've got to actually be very uncomfortable. We want to create measures and targets that create discomfort. They actually force the crisis because the crisis will come to us. Rather than reacting to that. Set a target or a measure that you right now, you don't think you can achieve. That helps us get rid of all the stupid changes people do and helps us begin to at least think differently, that we can't settle for just a change unless it's going to make a significant impact on the target we're trying to go after.

Anita Brick: Well, that sounds very nice, and I am on board with you with that. Yet if you are not the CEO of the company or you're not in an executive leadership position…

Kristen Cox: …how do you do it?

Anita Brick: Yeah. So my follow on question to you is how can I, if I am someone listening, how can I shape what is measured when I'm not executive leadership?

Kristen Cox: You know, and I've been there I've been down in the organization and going what the heck is going on here? So the last one of the seductive seven is, for me, kind of the foundational one. And it'll come to your question, it's about blaming and accountability. And what it really means is that I'm waiting for somebody else to fix my problem for me, and that I am hampered by and limited by other people. We really want to challenge that mindset and say, look, we have to first get really good with what we already have stewardship over. And this is my advice to people in organizations all the time because they fall into conflict. Look, I don't like what my boss is doing. I don't think my organization is going in the right direction.

Great. But what's your role? Your job is to do X, Y, and Z. Are you excellent? Are you solving problems for the people upstream and downstream for your immediate job? Are the presentations to your managers so good that you have their buy-in? It's so easy. And this is just human tendency to try to fix other people before we fix ourselves.

I think over time, our credibility and our ability to influence and impact comes from our own track record. And so before we try to go change the world, sometimes we first have to change ourselves. It's a long-term game. Get really good with where you are and your influence and your ability to impact. I think growth, I just think it's a very practical solution because I have ideas of how I'd love to change the world, but I know what I've got to do. So I'm working on an article this week. I've got to make sure that one article I'm writing is the best I can do. That's my advice. I wish I had an easier solution of how to use Jedi mind tricks or Vulcan mind melding, but I think at the end of the day, we've got to do the best with what we already have.

Anita Brick: I agree, I do believe it has to start with us. Be so excellent that people can't ignore us.

Kristen Cox: Yeah. Yes, that's a great book too. I know that's Steve Martin's book, I love it. Or they mention Steve Martin in it.

Anita Brick: That's right. I understand what you're saying.

There's another question that came in from another Boothie. It sounds like they've gone a little off the edge or a little over the cliff. Said: “In a world of so much uncertainty, I see a lot of blaming and pointing fingers in my team and in the individual members. This is not our normal behavior. This has emerged recently when things we propose aren't working well. What advice would you have for us?”

Kristen Cox: I will give a practical one and then I'll give a philosophical one. And if I may pull in a personal story again, Anita. So when I had that mentor come into my life, I ended up going to about a five month residential training for the blind, where you wear sleep shades all day, every day, and you have to learn how to use power saws and braille. And one of the things to graduate from the program is they would put us in a van with their sleep shades on and drive us around the city with music. We were in Baltimore at the time. Drive us around with music so we couldn't hear where we were, and they would drop us off in a random location and we'd have to find our way back to the training center on our own, and we could only ask one question along the way.

So of all the things I was working on, that one seemed the scariest for me. And to get ready for that, I have a few hours every day with one of my instructors to practice my cane travel, orientation and mobility. We do busses, we go downtown. But one day they took me to a park and I had to get my way out of this park. To this day, Anita, I can still remember exactly. I could feel the sun. No, I knew I was east, south, northwest. I knew my direction. I could hear the freeway. So I knew where I was. I was oriented, but I could not get out of this dang park. I would walk and I would hit a bench, and then I'd walk and I hit dirt, and then I'd walk and I'd hit grass.

I could not get out of it. It's very windy.

My teacher, Tony Cobb, I'm always indebted to him. He watched me and he gave me enough rope to myself and struggle. And I finally just stop walking because there is so much uncertainty and frustration with every step I took. And I just stopped. And I remember thinking at that point, is this what my life is going to be like? Like this level of effort for everything I do, this is not what I signed up for. And he came up to me and he said something that really changed my life then and I use it every day. He said, Kristen, you've got to learn to walk through your uncertainty, through the discomfort and through the fear. You will get no new information by standing still.

You have to walk into the unknown. That's where the information is.

That's philosophical. And I know it sounds floofy, but it's real. And we are in uncertain times. But life is always uncertain. We want certainty. We want plans, we want predictions, we want forecasts. We want solid reports and numbers to know how to navigate uncertain waters. But there's some level of peace that comes when we recognize and accept things are always uncertain. They always are. So the question isn't how do we change the uncertainty and the blaming and the blaming comes for that. But when we can learn to understand that this is part of it, in these times we will try to pivot our organizations as things move online. New elections, electric cars, the world's changing, but it always has.

So you'll try, you'll walk into the bench, you'll hit it and you say, that was information. I now know that doesn't work. It's not a failure. It's a fact. And that's the difference between successful people and those who aren't. They see it as a failure. Other people can see it that is fact. That's information that I, as a blind person now know. That direction won't get me where I need to go. And that mindset is so key and continually to make progress in the lives we live.

Anita Brick: I agree, and yet how do I or how does this individual rebuild the unity that is clearly been decimated? You know, there's some teams–you and I know this–there's some teams. There's some people they complain about everything. Yeah. They don't really get along. They tolerate each other. But it sounds like this was a team that was pretty unified. Now they're not. What are some things that they can do or that this one person can do to help create or rebuild the unity?

Kristen Cox: Yeah. Okay. I'm going to reinforce become the change you want to see in the world. So this sounds simple but start there. If you're blaming and you're pointing fingers and you're bringing anxiety and frustration to the team, it's very difficult to ask other people to change if you're not. So start with that. Now, I don't know what role this person plays. If they're a manager, if they're just somebody on the team. But I've worked with teams where there's not been unity, and it's not easy. Giving people a structure to work through the problem is really important. Otherwise, we go back and forth of who can justify their opinion the most and who's got the best idea. It's really important, I think, in these environments to create an actual structure, a process to go through where people can share their unverbalized fears. Those questions I asked you about the risk of change, not change. All of those are surfaced in a safe way, but there's a process to go through. You start with, okay, here's where we are. But instead of just trying to baby step our way to this, let's imagine where do we want to be in a year from now? What does that look like? Let's start changing the energy around the conversation to what's the direction? What's the goal? Where do we want to be?

The other thing, I think it's really important when you start talking about those goals, people need to have freedom to say yes, but. That's a really good idea, but. And we usually shut them down, we see that as negative and blaming. I actually think really good solutions come from when we give people space to speak like that. If we say, hey, in a year from now, we want our organization to be pivoted in this direction. This is our customer base. We've grown our customer base by 10%. We have loyal customers, whatever that is. People are going to say, yeah, but here's why that's hard. Give them, ask them. Pull that out of them. This is hard. But we don't have enough investment or capital. This is hard. But we have a, you know, small brand. No one's going to know us. This is hard. But go on and on. Those but’s actually in the work, you know, how we do the work become part of the solution. So you could say yes, but our brand isn't known. Okay, great. That's a really valid issue. Now let's flip that and put it part of our action plan. Instead of saying we don't have a good brand recognition, you flip it to the action step we need is we will have brand awareness within our customer target audience. That's an action step. It's a mental game. We start with negative things and we block ourselves out of the gate. If we flip it to this is now a positive statement we've got to work through. Is there a way to actually get more awareness with our target audience? Yeah, you could use third parties. You could do educating your market. There's lots of things you could do. And it becomes a task to solve versus an obstacle that blocks you. So we actually use a process to pull that out of people. Their fear, their anxiety, their “yes, but’s” now become a positive force for good versus something that becomes toxic in our organizations.

Anita Brick: That's very good because it gives people a path out. And I think that people dig their heels in when they feel scared.

Kristen Cox: Yeah, all of us do. We say, oh, we're just blaming the negative. I'm like, I keep blaming the negative when I feel like I'm stuck and my legitimate issue isn't being acknowledged, we all do it. So again, be the change you want to see in the world. We want people to hear us. Have the emotional capacity to hear other people's “yes, but’s”, and then help them find the path out of that. Great. We got it. Let's flip it into a task that we're going to handle in our project plan. We can solve that. Everything in our organizations are made up. They're made up. We have ideas. We have policies. They're made up. If it's not giving us, if it's not serving us, we can challenge it. We can change it. We can think differently.

Anita Brick: And it all takes courage, especially if you're not executive leadership.

Kristen Cox: It takes courage to speak truth to power, and it takes courage to be respectful in disagreeing. There's no doubt about that.

Anita Brick: You're absolutely right. Do you have time for one more question?

Kristen Cox: Yeah, absolutely.

Anita Brick: Okay, good. I really like the approach that you're taking because it's very empowering. What are three things that you would advise someone who's listening, who maybe is in the midst of facing numerous problems or challenges and needs a few practical next steps and a bit of encouragement. What are three things that you would tell that person to do beginning now?

Kristen Cox: Beginning now? One that I don't mean as Pollyanna, but I really believe in it, that all things work for our good. The hard things, the difficult things and the joyous things. But we have to open ourselves up to learning the lesson. It's hard and it's painful. We don't like it. We don't like the pain. But if we can understand, that's actually sometimes our best teacher. The hardest things I've gone through in my life are the things that I've grown the most out of. We know that intellectually, but to practice that. If I can learn to train myself on the small things that bug me, I can train myself and my mind to bear great adversity. The small things that bug us, those are teaching opportunities, including the big things. So that's one thing.

Number two, I would say be an independent thinker. Our organizations are flooded, and that's why we wrote this book with everyone doing more of the same and not asking why. Why are we doing this? What are we trying to achieve? The clarity of thought we need to transform our organization is rare. Clear, simple thinking is hard and it means being an independent thinker. Don't just accept it because that's what everybody else says. Don't just accept it because that's what the expert says. Use your own thought. One of my favorite books by Ralph Waldo Emerson, self-reliance. He says to believe your own thought, that is genius. And I think that's true. So to be an independent thinker.

And I would say the third thing I would guess, I'm going to say three and four. The third thing is to have clarity of purpose, meaning what is it that you're trying to achieve? You're in your organization. Are you trying to promote your own agenda? Are you trying to serve the people around you so the organization can thrive? Sometimes we need to have honest conversations with ourselves about what our intentions are, because we can find a lot of frustration because we're not getting what we want, even though that may not be the best thing for ourselves or everyone else in the long run. So we have to be pretty clear about our intentions.

And then I would say this final thing I would say never, never accept that the obstacles you think exists aren't solvable. Organizations or in our own lives, we want to see change, and we can automatically go to all the reasons why that thing can't happen. But reverse designing your future. Where do you want to be and what are the steps to get you there is very different than saying, here's where you are and here's all the reasons you can't move forward. You know, you look at the people out there, Elon Musk, you know, Tesla and Steve Job, all the people we always talk about, they envision their future and they work backwards from there.mAnd they believe that the obstacles could be broken, or we could have creative problem solving. But it starts with the mindset.

Anita Brick: You're absolutely right. If no one asks questions, clearly you and I would not be having this conversation.

Kristen Cox: We would not be able to do what we're doing. Somebody said, how can people talk when they're not in person?

Anita Brick: Yeah, right. And there you go.

This is great. Thank you so very much. And thank you for writing the book. I enjoyed it. It's a small book that packs a big punch and has some very wonderful illustrations in it. Again, it is Stop Decorating the Fish. Solving the right problem today is more important than ever before, and I'm so glad you made the time for us.

Kristen Cox: It was a total pleasure. Just so impressed with University of Chicago. Some of my best colleagues have come from there in the past, so just a pleasure to be on the show, Anita. Thank you so much.

Anita Brick: Thank you again. And thank you all for listening. This is Anita Brick with CareerCast at Chicago Booth. Keep advancing.