2010-08-11T23:54:00.000-07:00

Managers like to feel they can fix anything, but sometimes some problems are sticky
and not easy to recognise or solve, in fact they are downright messy.
Worse they won’t go away.

Messy problems are difficult to put your finger on, though you know or feel something
needs to change, they are without clear structure or boundaries – a bit like grasping mist-,
and difficult to fully understand as solutions are not clear cut, such as:

• Productivity has dropped off in the workgroup, but difficult to understand why;
• Workplace relations more brittle than usual with employees forming sides on issues;
• Seem to be ongoing difficulties in settling in an organizational change;
• There are role conflicts over who should do what;
• Assumptions about how to do things bogging the group down and affecting service;
• Staff survey suggests there are supervisory problems, but unclear how to fix issues.

To fix “messy problems” we need a way to capture not just what is happening: The “events”,
but find a way of fitting issues into a bigger framework so that all the relevant issues can
be better understood and wrestled down. Bit like the elephant in the room, everyone can
describe parts of the elephant but can’t put it all together. Systems thinking can describe
the elephants in your room.

This is where Human Activity Systems (HAS) techniques can help put it all together and identify:

• What you want (purpose);
• Whether people issues are costing us pain and money (relationships);
• If the design of work practices are causing frustrations (processes); or
• What’s happening in your work group that causing to go nowhere; and
• Whether they are working at cross purposes (assumptions & attitudes).

HAS is a way of putting it together and working out practical solutions. Please see HAS
diagram below, showing how a HAS places “events” into an interacting framework.

Sometimes it’s not rocket science, we just need another way of looking at problems to

get a handle on them and fix them.

Human Activity Systems (HAS), as described and exampled in my Google Knol Organizational Health, may well be your way to quickly fix some of the issues that you feel you need to clear up so you and your unit can get on with things with clear purpose and commitment.

Fixing Messy Workplace Problems, and Elephants