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I’ve lost count of the number of teams who tell me they’ve got a “problem-solving issue”, when what they really have is a problem-rushing issue.

 

 

You’ll recognise the pattern. Something goes wrong. A customer complains. A deadline slips. A system breaks. The team gets in a room (or on Teams), and within ten minutes someone has a solution. Everyone nods. Actions get scribbled down.

And then… nothing really changes. The same issue pops up again in a slightly different outfit three weeks later.

That’s exactly the situation I walked into with a service team I was asked to support. Good people. Busy people. Proud of being “can-do”. But their problem solving was basically a game of organisational whack-a-mole.

So I reached for a tool I trust: the Force Field Problem Solving Model, based on Kurt Lewin’s force-field theory. Not because it’s clever. Because it’s simple enough to use under pressure and structured enough to stop smart people kidding themselves.

The team challenge: smart people, messy outcomes

This team’s headline issue was “handover problems” between two departments. Work was bouncing back and forth. Emails were getting spiky. Customers were getting inconsistent answers. And every time they tried to fix it, they defaulted to the same three solutions:

• “Let’s remind people of the process.”
• “Let’s do a refresher training.”
• “Let’s create a new checklist.”

All reasonable… and all ineffective.

Why? Because they were treating the situation like a simple process gap, when it was actually a system of competing pressures. People weren’t ignoring the process because they were lazy. They were ignoring it because other forces were stronger.

That’s Lewin in a nutshell.

Lewin’s force-field theory in plain English

Kurt Lewin’s idea was that any situation you’re looking at is held in place by a balance of forces.

• Driving forces push for change (things that make the desired outcome more likely).
• Restraining forces push against change (things that keep the status quo in place).

If the restraining forces are stronger, your “solution” won’t stick.

And here’s the bit most teams miss: if you only push harder on the driving forces (“more training!”, “more comms!”, “more reminders!”), you often trigger more resistance. People feel pushed, judged, overloaded… and the restraining forces get even stronger.

A better approach is usually to reduce the restraining forces. Make it easier to do the right thing. Remove friction. Reduce fear. Fix the bottleneck. Clarify the decision rights.

That’s why force-field thinking is such a practical upgrade on the usual problem-solving theatre.

Why I chose the Force Field Problem Solving Model

I like this tool because it gives teams a reliable five-step process that stops them skipping the hard thinking. The model guides a group from:

1.       Describing the current situation and defining the problem
2.       Deciding on a solution objective
3.       Identifying the forces (driving and restraining)
4.       Determining the importance and ease of change for each force
5.       Creating change strategies and developing action plans

It’s structured, but it doesn’t require a PhD or a 40-slide deck. It also builds in something I wish more teams did: task and process evaluation questions at each step, so they can spot when they’re slipping back into blame, assumptions, or pet solutions.

What it looked like in the room

Step 1: Define the problem (properly)

The team’s first problem statement was: “Handover between departments is poor.”

That’s not a problem statement. That’s a complaint.

We tightened it to something observable: “Work is being returned for rework at handover, causing delays and inconsistent customer responses.”

Already, the conversation shifted from “they’re useless” to “what’s happening in the system?”

Step 2: Set a solution objective

Not “fix handovers”. Too vague.

We set: “Reduce handover rework by 50% within eight weeks, while maintaining response times.”

Now we had a target and a timeframe. You’d be amazed how many teams try to solve problems without either.

Step 3: Identify the forces

This is where the magic happens, because it surfaces the truth without turning it into a personal attack.

Driving forces we identified included:

• Shared desire to reduce customer complaints
• Pride in quality work
• A supportive team leader willing to change routines
• Existing process documentation (it wasn’t all chaos)

Restraining forces were more revealing:

• Conflicting KPIs (one team measured on speed, the other on accuracy)
• A clunky system that made it hard to see the full customer history
• “Hero culture” (people rewarded for firefighting, not prevention)
• Fear of being blamed if something was missed
• No clear decision on what “good enough” looked like at handover

Notice what’s missing? “People don’t care.” They cared a lot. They were just trapped in a set of pressures.

Step 4: Importance vs ease of change

This step prevents teams creating a wish list.

We rated each force on:

• Importance (how much does it affect the problem?)
• Ease of change (how realistic is it to shift?)

The team could see quickly that “replace the whole system” was important but not easy. Meanwhile, “agree a handover definition of done” was important and easy.

So we started there.

Step 5: Strategies and action plans

Here’s what we did (and why it worked):

• Aligned KPIs (or at least stopped them fighting each other): we created one shared measure for handover quality.
• Defined ‘definition of done’ for handover: a short checklist, yes, but built by both teams and tied to real examples.
• Reduced fear: leaders agreed a “no blame, fix the system” rule for the first month of changes.
• Improved visibility: a simple workaround to show customer context without waiting for an IT project.

The point wasn’t to do everything. It was to shift the balance of forces.

Why this approach is generally better

Most problem solving fails because teams:

• Jump to solutions before agreeing the real problem
• Treat symptoms, not the forces that create the symptoms
• Push harder (more pressure, more reminders) and accidentally increase resistance
• Create actions with no owners, no measures, and no follow-through

Force-field thinking makes teams slow down just enough to be effective. It also gives you a language for the “invisible stuff”  fear, incentives, culture, workload  without turning the session into a therapy circle.

A final thought for facilitators

If you want to sound clever, bring a complicated model.

If you want to be useful, bring something teams can actually use on a Tuesday afternoon when they’re tired, busy, and slightly defensive.

That’s why I keep coming back to the Force Field Problem Solving Model. It helps teams stop arguing about people and start working on forces.

And that’s usually where the real change begins.