Managers
How the Meta-Problem Process Can Help You Manage More Effectively
Managers are responsible for getting things done through other people. They decide how to deploy resources and people, within a defined budget, to deliver an agreed outcome that benefits their organization.
It’s a role that is rife with interests to be balanced, tradeoffs to be weighed, and consequences to be anticipated, all within a dynamic and changing environment. Those are exactly the circumstances where the meta-problem process really comes into its own.
The number and variety of topics a manager is responsible for ranges enormously and includes managing individuals, team management, organizing and prioritizing projects, and working with their own leadership to identify the work that will most benefit the organization.
Managing Individuals
One of your key responsibilities as a manager is to help your employees to do their best at work. At times, you will find someone has made the wrong choice and maybe doesn’t even recognize the complexities they missed.
Consider these different possible scenarios:
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You tasked someone with a project, and it turns out they did not have the right skills to do the work. You would want them to recognize relatively early that they need some help instead of just pushing on and trying to solve it themselves
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You tasked someone with a project, and it was a little complex, so they come back immediately and asked for help. You would want them to use their problem-solving skills to try some things and see if they can figure it out.
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You tasked someone with a project and there are multiple ways to do the work, with different benefits and costs. You may want them to make a judgement call, or you might prefer they bring the options back to you with the right information to let you decide what path to pursue.
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Once you have taught your staff to recognize these different categories of problems, you can help them more effectively tackle each one. Teaching them how to evaluate their options will help them be more effective and productive members of your team.
Managing Teams
Another aspect of management is guiding complex team dynamics. Whether you are identifying the right next person to hire, which skills to develop in the team, or who should do what, there are costs, benefits, and risks to any decision you could make.
Just like with individuals, part of your job as a manager is to help the team develop strong problem-solving strategies. Introducing them to the meta-problem approach is a very direct way to help them understand the consequences of different choices they could make as part of the group.
Beyond the individual though, Identifying the right group of people and skills to have on your team is a much more open-ended dilemma that managers regularly need to consider.
When faced with a new kind of challenge, should you bring in a specialist whom you need to train on your business, or invest in someone on your team to develop the new skills? When is it a good idea to invest in cross-training so you can keep everyone busy more of the time? Is it time to hire someone new to deal with an influx of work, or re-prioritize your existing projects to get through a temporary spike in needs?
Uncertainty is a major part of what makes these kinds of choices so difficult. You have to consider not only your goals in the present, but what your organization might need from you tomorrow. In a world with unknowns, flexibility is a key priority for managers everywhere.
Managing Projects
When starting with a list of priorities for the quarter or year, it can be hard to get a handle on how to juggle everything. Certain projects may need a lot of calendar time and repeated touches, but less of your total team capacity. Other projects might just need a short stint of focus from your most experienced employee or a much larger chunk of time for a more junior member of the group.
Managing a portfolio of projects is not all that different from managing investments. With limited dollars and people, where do you put your focus to maximize your return?
Following the meta-problem approach is a good way to start as it can help you get clearer on what the most important outcomes are. Focus on key deliverables, acceptable levels of risk across the team, and balancing resource needs. Maybe as you evaluate the portfolio you will identify synergies between projects or areas where there is just too much to do and some sacrifices will need to be made.
Once you get into delivering a specific project, there’s a new set of dilemmas you may need to face. A particular solution might seem the best, until you realize you don’t have the right expertise on your team to pull it off. Or while one option might be the best in the short term, your organization will quickly outgrow it and need to make additional investments to keep enjoying the benefits of the project.
Managing Internal Stakeholders
A key part of your job as a manager is to work with the rest of the business to build opportunities that will benefit your group while advancing the goals of the company.
You are the expert in what your team can do and what you already have on your plate. You are also the liaison between your employees and the rest of the company.
Understanding the key dilemmas your organization is facing can help you see opportunities to solve them. Maybe someone on your team wants to learn a new technology at the same time that your organization is looking for ways to start testing it. Or you may need some help with a project just as another group has some extra people looking to pitch in.
As always with the meta-problem, the key question to ask yourself is “what problems are the best ones to solve because of the eventual impacts they will have on my goals?”
If you have questions for how you can use the meta-problem in your work as a manager, or if you want to engage me to help, click on "Contact" and fire away!