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Heinrich from Firm Learning, and welcome back to my channel
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I upload a new video. Today, I got inspired by Victor Cheng, and if you don't know him, check him out. He has a website, caseinterview.com,
where he helps people to master the consulting case
interviews, great resource, check it out, caseinterview.com, and I received a newsletter
from him where he talked about the topic Problem Talker
Versus Problem Solver. He contrasts two type of people; those who talk about problems
and those who actually solve problems, and this was
a topic that resonated with me a lot because I observed these two different types of mentality
a lot in the last years. I've seen these type of
people, and when I read this, I completely agreed that
this is what is going on and that these are the two types of people that are out there, and trust
me, one of these two types is clearly better than the
other, and I'd like to help you understand the differences,
and also give you some tips how you can rather become a problem solver than just a problem talker,
what the differences are, and why this is so important,
why all organizations need lots and lots of problem solvers, but problem talkers aren't
really what is interesting and necessary and helpful to the people. So, what are problem talkers, to start with this group of people? Problem talkers like
to talk about problems. They like to identify problems, to see them, and to describe them. So, Victor Cheng here gives three examples of what problem talkers do. Let's just go over some of them. So it's, for instance, somebody who says, "Boss, this budgeting process
is just so inefficient, "there's no use of it,
and it's just wasting "everybody's time," right, this would be a typical statement of a problem talker. Or, "Hey, the way that we
orient on new employees, "the way that we onboard
them, just doesn't work, "it's not efficient and not working "for these new colleagues," or
Is driving throughout a city and you say, "Hey, this
tree is just hanging "in front of the stop sign,
this is so unprofessional. "Somebody needs to do something about it. "Somebody needs to inform the
city, this needs to change "because it's just unsafe," right? So, these are typical things
that problem talkers will do, and it's just really
important to understand the psychology behind all that. Why would people behave in this way? Well, and I think an important
and the key part of that is that it's because it makes
these people feel intelligent, feel smart, "Hey, I'm the
one who identified this, "I got this, obviously
everybody else cannot see this "because the problem
was still there, right, "but I'm the one who got
this, I identified it, "and if everybody would
be as smart as I am, "then things like that would not happen." I think this is a characteristic
of such a problem talker that the way that he
sees the problems is that these problems are always
caused by the other people. The other people are
responsible for these problems, but it's never the problem
solver, and if only these other people would
do their jobs right, the problems like that
wouldn't exist, right? If only the other people
would take their job as seriously as the problem talker does, then the world would
be a much better place. So, let's now contrast that
with how a problem solver would approach these types of situations, and as the name says, the problem solver does not only talk about all
the things that need to change, but he actually tries to make a difference and to make an impact,
and to actually change and solve these problems,
and yes, it is true that very often it is just
not possible that you, as one person, organization,
can solve all the problems by yourself, even though I
would say the people frequently underestimate the impact
that they actually can have if they really, really
wanted to make a difference. But yes, it is true that
this is not possible, but then what the problem solver does is, at least he does not only
try to come up, at least, with an idea or a suggestion
how it could work, but he also tries to go the
first steps in that direction to not only come up with, yeah obviously, this is what would need
to happen, but also to go in the first steps in that direction to actually make that a reality. And, let's now go over these examples that we just discussed a bit earlier about how a problem solver
talks about the problems. Let's go over these examples,
what the problem solver now actually could do,
and now starting with the budgeting process,
the problem solver would not only say that the
budgeting process doesn't work, but he would make a couple of suggestions of how the budget process
could actually improve, and what substantiate these suggestions, maybe talk to some colleagues to make sure that this really makes sense, and then, you wouldn't stop here,
but he then would reach out to the person who actually
is responsible for shaping the budgeting process, and
then just proposes to him, just in an open and
constructive way, raises topic and just make a few ideas
how this could change, and if you do not do that
in a confrontive way, very frequently you will
see that people actually quite responsible for good
ideas because these good ideas then hopefully make the
work and the life easier for everybody who was involved, right, so why wouldn't then
the person responsible for the budgeting process
not take on that idea? So, he goes that step in that direction. The other example was
the onboarding process for new employees that
apparently just did not work, so what would a problem solver do? He would not only complain
about the onboarding process that wouldn't work,
but he would just start creating a few documents,
maybe a checklist that new employees can use. And that order for them
that the onboarding process would be a bit more
smoothly and more helpful, so some resources, for
instance, that he would've found helpful when he joined the company, and then once he gives this
to a couple of colleagues in his direct team that maybe
then you'll join us then. If this picks up and people
see that this is helpful, very likely has an awesome opportunity to push this to the larger
department, or maybe even the whole organization because
he just made an impact there, and this will show an
initiative, and this is how he really can solve these problems. Or, the third example was
the example with the tree that is hanging in front of the stop sign, where the problem solver
now could just call the city and let them know that
this problem exists, let them know where exactly
the street is located, where exactly it is
covering the stop sign, and pretty likely then the city, once it has been officially informed, it will do something
about it, and make sure that this tree then gets
taken away from the stop sign, and now the safety is restored again. So, these are things that
problem solvers would do. They try to solve the
problem, and they do not only talk about the problems,
and from my experience, problem solvers like
that belong to the most valuable people that
organizations can have. Organizations can never
have enough problem solvers, but pretty much do not
need problem talkers because the reality is that,
even though the problem talker maybe believes that he is so smart because he sees the
problem, pretty usually, these problems are perceived
by many, many people, but the reality is that
most of these people don't do anything about them. Most people are problem talkers,
but only very few people are problem solvers, that's
just the truth, guys. In fact, this is just natural. This is how we humans behave. We tend to believe that
if there's a problem, it's not because of us, but
it's because of other people who made the mistake, and it's something that I sometimes catch myself as well. If I watch myself, I see that I have such a thought that there's a problem, and probably somebody else
is responsible for that, but if I'm really honest to
myself, I know and I understand that I would have the
power to do something about that as well, and this
would be now my advice to you. Whenever you have such
a thought in your head, this is going bad, this doesn't work, these idiots from the other department, why aren't they doing a better job? Always ask what can you do,
what do you have in your power to actually make a difference
and to make an impact for your organization, because
if you adopt that mindset, you will not only be a problem talker, but you will be a problem solver, and this is what organizations will value, and this is how you will be successful in the end as an employee and as a person in your whole life, I would say. So, thank you for watching. If you took any value
out of this video at all, please press the Like button below, and if you would like to
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here from Firm Learning. Thank you, goodbye.