Skip to main content

How Leaders Use Four Workarounds To Tackle Complex Problems

 

“Workarounds are effective, versatile, and accessible methods for tackling complex problems,” shares the author of the new book, The Four Workarounds. “They are a creative, flexible, imperfection-loving, problem-solving approach. A method that ignores or even challenges conventions on how, and by whom a problem is meant to be solved.” 

In Part 1 of this fascinating and instructional book, author and Oxford University professor, Paulo Savaget, explains what workarounds are and how to come up with them. And, then in Part 2, he digs into how to cultivate a workaround attitude and mindset, including how to reflect on the ways you typically see, judge, and approach obstacles.
 
“I also show you how you can systematically conceive workarounds to your problems and how your workplace can become more workaround friendly,” adds Savaget.
 
You’ll read intriguing and revealing stories of how some of the largest and scrappiest companies and organizations used one or more of the four workarounds to accomplish their objectives.
 
Those four workarounds are:
 
The Piggyback: Capitalizing on pre-existing but seemingly unrelated systems or relationships. Whether they are mutually beneficial or parasitic, they rely on looking for possibilities that might have gone unnoticed.
 
The Loophole: Exploiting technicalities and ambiguities in what rules do and don’t say.
 
The Roundabout: Disrupting self-reinforced behaviors.
 
The Next Best: Repurposing resources. They can be a temporary patch to allow people to achieve goals more quickly, provide the opportunity to explore options outside the mainstream, or create a new precedent.
 


Paulo Savaget
 
Today, the author shares these additional insights with us:
 
Question: What is a workaround?
 
Savaget: A workaround is a creative, flexible, imperfection-loving, problem-solving approach. At its core, a workaround is a method that ignores or even challenges conventions on how, and by whom, a problem is meant to be solved.
 
Let me illustrate with an example I learned from Zambia: many medicines cannot be found in remote regions of Sub-Saharan Africa because of hard-to-solve bottlenecks in healthcare, such as poor infrastructure and logistics systems.
 
A workaround doesn’t try to tackle these bottlenecks; it circumvents them instead. The organization I studied in Zambia worked around them by piggybacking on Coca-Cola’s distribution channels. They realized Coca-Cola can be found even in the remotest places on earth – so why can’t medicines take a free ride with soda bottles?
 
Question: When might you need a workaround?
 
Savaget: Workarounds thrive in complex situations – when stakes are high, resources are scarce, and there’s no time for the usual drawn-out decision-making processes. They are well suited because they embrace uncertainty and imperfection and address our most urgent needs while exploring more robust alternatives.

Question: What does it mean to be a “scrappy organization?”
 
Savaget: I call “scrappy” small organizations that are feisty, resourceful, and operate at the fringes of power. They think quickly out of necessity, and despite some apparent clumsiness they often persist and succeed because of their unconventional methods. They don’t get paralyzed by what is lacking in a context; they see a world of possibilities by looking at unexplored places, finding unconventional pairings, and repurposing resources.
 
Question: Why do you think we should value scrappy organizations? 
 
Savaget: The research behind The Four Workarounds builds on the knowledge and experiences of scrappy organizations – not from big businesses or global powerhouses, but from the little guys with limited resources, often scraping by on the periphery. I get deeply annoyed with the conventional wisdom that large companies are inherently superior, better run, and better equipped than scrappy organizations. This book shows how the business world can learn from the innovative wit and practical ingenuity of these “ugly ducklings.”
 
Question: What is a workaround mindset?
 
Savaget: A workaround mindset challenges the conventional wisdom that the best course of action is always to understand the full picture and remove visible obstacles. The three principles are recognizing the limits of your knowledge, adjusting lenses, and thinking like an outsider. These principles help us embrace complexity and find opportunities for workarounds.
 
Question: How can organizations become more workaround friendly?
 
Savaget: My book shows how organizations of all sizes can become more workaround friendly. That involves recommendations for strategy, culture, leadership, and teamwork. It also offers a sort of playbook for individuals who want to come up with workarounds for the personal problems they face.
 
Thank you to the book’s publisher for sending me an advance copy of the book.

 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

How To Find The Job You Love

In 2024, I named Be The Unicorn: Data-driven Habits That Separate The Best Leaders From The Rest , by William Vanderbloemen , as the best new leadership book of that year.   The book is timely, incredibly practical, and immediately usable for any leader wherever they are on their leadership journey.   Through extensive research of more than 30,000 top leaders and proprietary data, Vanderbloemen identified in the book the twelve habits that the best of the best leaders have in common. These superstar leaders are the unicorns – highly desirable but that are difficult to find or obtain.   And now, Vanderbloemen followed up that gem of a book with another terrific book called, Work How You Are Wired: 12 Data-Driven Steps To Finding A Job You Love . It’s a great companion book to Be The Unicorn .   Those 12 steps align with these 12 personality traits/interpersonal habits: Fast Authentic Agile Solver Anticipator Prepared Self-aware Curious Connected Likeable Producti...

How To Master The Cycles Of Leadership: The Four Seasons

Whether you’re an aspiring leader, a newly appointed CEO, or a board member wanting to better steward your company’s performance, A CEO For All Seasons: Mastering The Cycles Of Leadership is the hands-on playbook you need – packed with practical, proven tips to help you navigate the four distinct phases of leadership.  “The journey of a CEO has a beginning, middle, and end, and the challenges leaders face early on are often far different than those midway through and near retirement, explain the authors of the book – Carolyn Dewar , Scott Keller , Vikram Malhotra, and Kurt Strovink .   “For us, the most apt analogy to describe these cycles is the four seasons of the year,” they add.  Spring : Stepping up - Preparing for the role. Summer : Transitioning into the role. Starting strong. Leading with impact. Fall : Navigating the middle years. Staying ahead. Sustaining momentum. Enhancing your learning. Future-proofing the organization. Winter : Transitioning out of the rol...

How To Align Sales And Marketing To Drive Company Success

Nearly 90 percent of startups will fail without ever reaching a point of positive return on investment. Founders and entrepreneurs are facing unprecedented challenges in pursuit of becoming one of the coveted 10 percent.   Who better to turn to for advice than the duo behind the most successful software IPO in history?   That is where Denise Persson and Chris Degnan come in, authors of the new book, Make It Snow .   During the nearly nine years they worked together at Snowflake, they built  one of the longest-running and most effective sales-marketing partnerships from the ground up, unifying  two historically divided groups in corporate America. Together, they took Snowflake from struggling startup to a tech powerhouse on par with Google and Amazon. Over the years, Snowflake surged to more than 9,000 employes and $3 billion in annual sales.   “Sales and marketing are often neglected in startups, with focus squarely placed on the engineerin...

How To Achieve Transformational Success For Leaders

The book,   Reinventing the Leader ,  is an inspiring account of the magic that can happen when a leader realizes they must undergo their own transformation in order to transform their organization.  This candid and practical book by  Guilherme  ( Gui) Loureiro , Regional CEO overseeing Walmex, Walmart Canada, and Walmart Chile (now Chairman of the Board for Walmex and Regional CEO for Canada, Chile, Central America, and Mexico), and his executive leadership coach  Carlos Marin  shows how even the most successful leaders must be open to personal change in order to transform their company. The book details how the pair pioneered a data-driven, customer-centric business transformation at Walmex—Walmart’s biggest division outside of the United States. “This book is a blueprint for transformational success for leaders in any business who find themselves facing the need to retool their own company’s systems and operations and energize and inspire an entire ...

How To Lead Bigger

Anne Chow ’s book,  Lead Bigger , is about “where it all comes together.” By that, she means: Being driven by a compelling purpose and values, which are not platitudes, but rather lived. The goals are better decisions, improved performance, and ultimately a greater impact. Impact means you have the power to make real and enduring change for the better. Widening your perspective to have a greater performance and impact. Advancing work that matters. Developing a vital, innovative workforce that is both trusted and agile. Championing flexibility by embracing trust and empowerment for individuals, teams, and leaders alike.   Drawing from over three decades of experience, former CEO of AT&T Business Chow shares that leading bigger also means:   Embracing the whole of your team beyond the workplace : Seeing the value and potential of each individual—in the context of not only their work, but also their life.   Engaging in self-reflection : Demonstrating self-awareness ...

How To Be An Inspirational Leader

Today, I bring back one of my most-read blog posts from 2017. It read as follows: At the end of each year, I select my choice for the  best new leadership book  for that year and then highlight that book on my blog. Well, we're only five months into 2017 and there is a new leadership book so good that I can't wait until year-end to share it with you. And it's likely to be among the select few options for best new leadership book of 2017. It's called,  The Inspiration Code , by  Kristi Hedges . Perhaps now more than any other time, the need for inspirational leadership is critical in the workplace. Filled with profound insights and compelling data and based on a commissioned survey on who and what inspires people, Hedges uncovers a set of consistent, learnable behaviors that dramatically enhance leadership success. And shows you  how to inspire those you lead. And, how to energize people every day . Kristi Hedges But, first, what exactly is inspiration? Hedges ex...

How To See What’s Holding You Back As A Leader

What you don't see about yourself can hold you back as a leader. That's typical for many leaders. What we don't see is what we  can't  see: we have  blindspots . Your blindspots prevent you from achieving your greatest success.  “It turns out that we're often not great judges of ourselves, even when we think we are. Sometimes we're simply unaware of a behavior or trait that's causing problems,” explains Martin Dubin , author of the new book, Blindspotting: How To See What’s Holding You Back As A Leader . “Bottom line: until we uncover these blindspots, we can't move forward. The good news is that you can learn to do your own  blindspotting .”   “Most of us understand the idea of blindspots in a general sense—areas we can’t see, to take the term most literally, or places we have gaps that we may not even realize, to be a little more abstract,” says Dubin.  “But in the context of this book, I’m defining blindspots quite specifically: They are the par...

Effective Listening: Do's And Don'ts

Here are some great tips from Michelle Tillis Lederman's book, The 11 Laws of Likability .  They are all about: what to do and what not to do to be a leader who's an effective listener : Do : Maintain eye contact Limit your talking Focus on the speaker Ask questions Manage your emotions Listen with your eyes and ears Listen for ideas and opportunities Remain open to the conversation Confirm understanding, paraphrase Give nonverbal messages that you are listening (nod, smile) Ignore distractions Don't : Interrupt Show signs of impatience Judge or argue mentally Multitask during a conversation Project your ideas Think about what to say next Have expectations or preconceived ideas Become defensive or assume you are being attacked Use condescending, aggressive, or closed body language Listen with biases or closed to new ideas Jump to conclusions or finish someone's sentences

10 Quotes From The 5 Levels Of Leadership -- John C. Maxwell

Soon I'll post my full review of John C. Maxwell's latest book, The 5 Levels of Leadership .  In the meantime, here are some of my favorites quotes from the book that I believe should become a must-read book by any workplace/organizational leader: Good leadership isn't about advancing yourself.  It's about advancing your team. Leaders become great, not because of their power, but because of their ability to empower others. Leadership is action, not position. When people feel liked, cared for, included, valued, and trusted, they begin to work together with their leader and each other. If you have integrity with people, you develop trust.  The more trust you develop, the stronger the relationship becomes.  In times of difficulty, relationships are a shelter.  In times of opportunity, they are a launching pad. Good leaders must embrace both care and candor. People buy into the leader, then the vision. Bringing out the best in a person is often a catal...

How To Embrace And Learn From Failing

When you read the book,  Right Kind of Wrong: The Science Of Failing Well , you’ll gain a greater appreciation for the benefits that comes from failure, and how to embrace failure as part of your journey to achieving greater success.   Author  Amy Edmondson ’s book and revolutionary guide will undoubtedly transform your relationship with failure.   She defines  failure  as an outcome that deviates from desired results. Failure is a lack of success. Failure is different, explains Edmondson, from  errors  and  violations . “Errors (synonymous with mistakes) are unintended deviations from prespecified standards, such as procedures, rules, or policies. Violations occur when an individual intentionally deviates from the rules,” adds Edmondson.   After decades of award-winning research, Edmondson provides the framework to think, discuss, and practice failure wisely. Outlining the three archetypes of failure— basic ,  complex , and  i...