For just shy of fort years as a management consultant I have had to carefully dance with almost all my clients. It was careful because I could not let them know we were dancing. And we were dancing because seldom what the client wanted, the services they wanted me to provide, was what they needed. To establish a helpful working relationship I certainly could not begin with sharing this practice wisdom. So I always began with validating the existence of a problem and then worked toward an agreement to define the presenting problem by using observable and measurable indicators. This was my strategy to make sure that we start at the beginning, not someplace down the road. This starting at the beginning is another way of saying before getting busy with solutions let’s properly define the problem first.
It is incredible what can be accomplished when a problem is properly (operationally) defined.
Seth Godin in his most recent publication; This is Marketing, uses the analogy of a lock. The lock being the problem and the key, the solution to opening it.
This clever analogy can readily be applied to the pervasive ever growing global problem of using and abusing intoxicating substances. This is the lock that needs the right key to open.
Unfortunately, to date our efforts to understand the lock’s innards, to make the right key, has not produced very stellar results.
Even worse, all kinds of efforts have gone into designingand manufacturing keys and then selling them as capable of opening the lock. None of the keys have opened the lock, however, judging by the escalating demand for illicit intoxicating substances and the escalating expenditure to cut off the supply sources of it.
So, to be sure, we can design and make all sorts of keys. Perhaps by sheer luck one just might open that enigmatic lock. What are the chances of this happening and are we willing to wait for something that probably won’t happen for a long time, if ever?
To heed Godin’s sage advice, a better strategy would be to spend energy and resources on examining, analyzing or otherwise understanding the lock and then designing and manufacturing the key that will finally open it.
Part of the required understanding of the lock must include acknowledging that there are many forces at work which do not want the lock to be opened. Keeping it closed serves many purposes not the least of which are the various key manufacturers and providers.
Instead of singularly focusing on reactive measures, keys, keys and more keys, our wants, surely we would be better served by pursing knowledge about what we need. Once we get there we can then finally design the right key that will open the way to prevention and sustainable remediation of what already is in place. After all we are incredible problem solvers once we understand what needs to be solved.
My forthcoming trilogy, the first of which is now available on Amazon (TWO: One Destined to Addiction the Other to be Free) is intended to both provide knowledge/understanding of the lock and based on this understanding how to design and manufacture the key with which the finally open it.
atpolgar 