The 1-3-1 Problem Solving Method for small business owners. You can use this method yourself and, more importantly, to develop and empower your team to learn how to solve problems on their own.

Episode Host: Henry Lopez is a serial entrepreneur, small business coach, and the host of this episode of The How of Business podcast show – dedicated to helping you start, run and grow your small business.

Resources:

Related Podcast Episodes:

Episode 530: Complex Decision Making

You can find other episodes of The How of Business podcast, the best small business podcast, on our Archives page.

Transcript:

The following is a full transcript of this episode. This transcript was produced by an automated system and may contain some typos.

Henry Lopez (00:16):

Welcome to this episode of The How of Business. This is Henry Lopez and my co-host is David Begin. David, welcome back on the show.

David Begin (00:23):

Thanks for having me, Henry. We’re glad we’re recording this the day after the hurricane came rolling through the east coast of Florida.

Henry Lopez (00:33):

Milton, right? Gosh, I don’t even know the name of it. I think it’s Milton.

David Begin (00:35):

Yeah, it’s just Milton.

Henry Lopez (00:37):

Yeah, we were fortunate, we’re on the east coast. I’m on the east coast about an hour north of Palm Beach, and so we got a couple of the outer bands. The scariest thing was several tornadoes that were spawned, but we were good. We didn’t even lose power, so we were very fortunate.

David Begin (00:51):

Yeah, good shape.

Henry Lopez (00:53):

Yeah. Alright, well we’re going to talk about problem solving specifically a method that actually you taught me or a version of it. Anyway, there’s various versions of this method, but we’ll call it the one three one Problem Solving method. And so David are going to explore, David and I are going to explore this method on this episode so you can use it for yourself. But I think even more importantly and powerfully is to help your team develop this, use this as a way to empower them to make decisions, which is so important. David and I talked about this on previous episodes, how when we are, and we’ll explore this when we are the firefighter in chief, as I like to say, the ultimate decision maker that doesn’t scale. And part of it is we tend to undermine our teams on them being able to make decisions. And so this is a method by which you can help them at least bring to you possible solutions.

Henry Lopez (01:51):

So that’s what we’re going to talk about on this episode. Alright, so as I mentioned, you and I did an episode a bit back, episode 530 on complex decision making, which is kind of related here where we addressed how do you make complex decisions in the business. This is now kind of a tool related to that. The 1-3-1problem solving method. And let me explain it and then we’ll get into it, David, but at a high level, the way I’d like to define it is the 1-3-1problem solving method teaches ourselves, but more importantly, teaches team members to independently analyze issues or problems that are arising in the business by identifying and defining the problem.

Henry Lopez (02:52):

What is the real problem, the one problem we’re going to address, then brainstorming three possible solutions and then recommending one. But they come to you ideally having thought through either by themselves or with their teams, what are those possible solutions as opposed to just coming to you and having you propose the solutions or fix the problem. So this fosters amongst your team and for yourself, critical thinking skills that autonomy and empowerment, it develops problem solving skills and it also allows you to leverage that collective knowledge and experience of your team members, your tapping into that. And more importantly, as I said at the outset, you don’t have to make all of the decisions. So that’s what I mean by 1-3-1, the problem solving method. David.

David Begin (03:46):

Yeah, I think that’s huge, and I’m glad we’re talking about this subject because, and for a number of reasons, I believe business owners get stuck in this routine of giving people the answers. And if you’re a small company and you’re just starting out, that probably is what needs to happen. But as you start growing and you start scaling your team, and that’s an antiquated way of solving problems, is going to the owner asking what the owner should do and then going away and doing what the owner tells you to do. I think you’ve got to realize that there’s probably, because as I think about this, I think why do we do this? And a lot of it is because, well, we’re a smaller business, we’re the chief owner and it is imperative that we kind of make the decisions as the business becomes established. But as you start building out a team, you need to be able to transfer that to your team. So they’re coming to you with ideas as opposed to they’re coming to you with questions. And the phrase I always used when I finally changed my way of managing is when people came and asked me what they wanted to do, I would say, well, what do you think we ought to do? And then, oh, we hadn’t thought about that. Why don’t you go away and think about it and come back. So I would always encourage them to go back and come up with solutions and it’s very easy for us to do thinking for our employees.

Henry Lopez (05:22):

Yeah, a lot of great points there. Yeah. So this is if you will, a little bit more rigor or structure to what do you think we need to do? But your point on, I always talk about this, that making all of the decisions to your point is obviously typically necessary for us, a small business owner when it’s just us or maybe it’s you and your partner, and that becomes our identity. And I think that that is really hard to let go. You and I were talking about as we were thinking about what would we discuss on this episode, I think you called it the chief problem solver, but it all related here we develop an identity, and you made this point, often you probably are the best at making the decisions, but that’s not the point here,

David Begin (06:07):

Right? This goes back to some of the concepts we talked about, where the owner can do it better, I can do it better myself. And so you just do it because you can quickly get it done. You can do it the way you want to, don’t have to spend the time, energy, and effort explaining it to other employees who will probably do it a little differently than the way you want to do it. There’s a lot of effort that’s got to be put into that. And so you say, you know what? I’ll just do it myself. That’s not scalable.

Henry Lopez (06:36):

It’s not scalable, it’s not scalable. And what we then get surprised with, as I mentioned, is if we’ve got a good team and we empower and we develop them, we’re going to be surprised how they will bring ideas that we did not think about what’ll start to happen eventually,

David Begin (06:56):

Some of the best ideas will come from your employees

Henry Lopez (06:59):

Because, because closest to the problem typically, or they’re the ones experiencing it or they’re the ones that saw it happen. So they are closest to it often,

David Begin (07:07):

Right? And so this does take some time, energy, and effort, but it’s teaching your team what they need to be doing. So it requires some effort on your part and some patience on your part to understand that they’re not going to want to do it, they’re not going to do it correctly at first. You’re going to have to keep coaching them and moving on as you start doing this 1-3-1method.

Henry Lopez (07:33):

Exactly. So let’s talk about that. How do we teach our team leaders in particular on the 1-3-1method? First is to explain what this is the purpose of this 1-3-1method. So we have to explain now we got to get ’em on board and like you said, it is going to take repetition. It’s not going to happen magically. You’re going to be frustrated. I know it because we were going to ask people and they’re still not going to trust us. First of all, that we want to hear their opinion. And so it takes us to continue to say it. No, I want you to go take a moment and brainstorm. Maybe you are with your team and come back with three options if that’s possible. If the place is really on fire, then we got to react faster. But typically you have the opportunity to do that, but explain what is the purpose of it. So you might say something like this, this is a 1 3, 1 method is a quick and effective way to solve problems and make decisions. It keeps us from overthinking because we’re focusing on the one thing we need to fix. Everybody’s aligned, and so let’s walk through this. So that’s how you might position it and then walk them through it and be ready to, as I said, to walk them through it several times until they get it right. So that’s first step. Explain to them what is the purpose of this. Anything you would add there?

David Begin (08:52):

No, I think it’s important. Like said Henry, it’s going to take some time for them to get their brains around this and so be patient because it’s not going to go like you hope the first 30 times you do this.

Henry Lopez (09:07):

That’s right. You’re going to get disappointed, but you got to stick to it, right? Don’t let that be the reason you say to yourself, you see, I just need to make all the decisions. But then again, as another example, what if I want to be gone for a week or two weeks or what if I want to start stepping back from the day to day? Well, you won’t be able to because the business will be paralyzed. People will be waiting to get ahold of you to make any kind of decision so that doesn’t scale.

David Begin (09:33):

Just one quick thing, do you think it’s human nature where people don’t want to take the risk of making a decision?

Henry Lopez (09:41):

That’s a good question. I think sure it is, but I think it gets exacerbated in an environment where people are not empowered to make a decision. What do I mean by that? Either we don’t allow them to because we make the big decisions or we’ve undermined them when they do make a decision.

David Begin (09:59):

Yeah, I

Henry Lopez (10:00):

Think that creates a culture where you just don’t dare because you’re afraid of what if I make a mistake

David Begin (10:06):

Or we don’t encourage them to think about,

Henry Lopez (10:09):

We don’t encourage them to think about it. We don’t teach them this skill. So we get frustrated and we say, oh, I’ll just make the decision myself. We have to understand that this is a skill that we’ve developed over time, and what happens is with a lot of other skills, we have to be consciously competent. We have to learn that how do we teach others to do it? And this method applies not only to ourselves, but to others as well.

Henry Lopez (10:35):

So we walk through it and here I have an example kind of at a high level that will help us walk through it. So first is identifying the one problem, and I think that’s key as well. I think that is a hidden kind of additional value of this method is the concept of 1 3, 1 problem, not trying to solve all of these different problems. This goes back to you and I did an episode about root cause. What is the real source of the problem here? Now, you don’t want to go do a project on this, but very quickly, what is the real problem? So get clear. We need to get clear on what is the problem. So in this example, let’s say our marketing campaign isn’t reaching enough potential customers or our goal, let’s say, was to generate 10% more leads at the top of our sales funnel, but we’ve only seen over the last three months after this campaign maybe a 1% increase, which isn’t enough to justify the expense.

Henry Lopez (11:29):

So that’s the specific challenge that we need to work on. How do we improve our marketing campaigns such that we generate more leads? And that’s what we’re going to focus on step two. So we’ve clearly identified the problem. That’s step one. Step two is the three. Step two is the three meaning the three possible solutions. So now let’s brainstorm three solutions together. So initially you might do this with them. I think you’ll have to, and they don’t have to be perfect. Brainstorming isn’t about perfect, but let’s just come up with some ideas on how we should address the issue. For example, we might come up with these ideas. Well, one might be let’s redesign the ad content to make it visually more appealing or more in alignment with our target customers and their pain points. And maybe those targets will reach a broader audience. Or number two, let’s increase our ad spend, let’s add more money to it, which is going to work on getting more visibility, more exposures, more impressions, or three. Another idea might be shift our focus, let’s say to Google ads and away from Facebook that used to work for us a year ago, but isn’t performing as well now, and our audience is more actively searching for this solution that we provide as opposed to looking for it on Facebook. So let’s say those were the three ideas. Now it’s not that easy to pick the one, but that is the final step. But encouraging the team to brainstorm I think is critical. What are your thoughts there? What have you seen that’s worked, David?

David Begin (13:05):

And that can be difficult.

Henry Lopez (13:06):

It It can be difficult. Yeah,

David Begin (13:08):

It is better to do the brainstorming in a group because you can get group interaction and one person gives an idea, the other person gives an idea based on that idea, and you’re just writing down all the possible different solutions to the problem. To get one person to do that is really difficult, but it’s a good exercise if you can get them to do that.

Henry Lopez (13:29):

Exactly. So initially, as we’re teaching them, you as the business owner, as a leader will have to walk them through that, participate in it. Ideally you’re enabling them to either go do it by yourself, but to your point, much more effective is if they have a team, maybe just another person or whatever their team might be that they brainstorm with first and then bring you the three proposed solutions. That would be ideal, right? If not, if they don’t have a team, at least they’ve thought through it ahead of time and they can propose a potential solution.

David Begin (14:07):

So I go back when I hired an operations manager to help me with the yogurt shops and the car washes and everything else that we owned, and I think about going through this process with him, and it took about six to nine months for him to finally understand what I wanted. And so by asking him these questions and what the possible solutions are, what I was really doing was I was testing his thinking about the problem. Because if I could get him to think about the problem correctly, then I had a lot more confidence that he would come up with different scenarios and solutions that I would like or I said. Yeah, that’s right. Exactly. So that’s the other part of this is testing how somebody thinks about it and what are they considering as they’re coming up with their

Henry Lopez (15:01):

Answers. That’s got to mean David, but tell me if I’m right or not, that you must have given him. And there goes back to the point of investing, the time you took the time to share with him, this is why we’re going to go this way. This is how I’m thinking about this. So you were more transparent with him as to why one option was better than the other. Is that fair?

David Begin (15:24):

Yeah, I think that is fair and understanding the fact he doesn’t think like I do. So I wanted him to understand when I’m trying to solve a problem, I’m thinking about these things as well as what you are thinking about. He might just be thinking about things operationally, but I want him to take into consideration what are the risks associated with this particular choice? Is there a financial risk? Is there a liability risk? Is there, I always thought in terms of risk when we were choosing something or doing something, and I wanted him to start thinking about that, and that’s not something he ever thought about.

Henry Lopez (16:05):

The other way that I put this, and you and I have talked about this is to, it seems instinctive, think two or three steps ahead of that decision. And so part of what we’re teaching them is, okay, let’s say we do this thing, what are the potential ramifications? Good and bad? I got to be able to think through that pretty quickly. What’s the impact here? Is it going to cause another problem? Am I going to create an exposure? Am I going to have a compliance issue? What are the potential exposures? I think to those very quickly and then they tell me whether, okay, that nullifies this option because there’s too much exposure, too much risk to use your words. Yeah.

David Begin (16:44):

So in that, I’m checking his thinking. So how did you arrive at that decision, that solution? What were some of the things you thought about to say that you thought this was the better choice?

Henry Lopez (16:59):

This is Henry Lopez briefly pausing this episode to invite you to schedule a free coaching consultation with me. I welcome the opportunity to chat with you about your business plans and offer the guidance and accountability that we all need to achieve success. As an experienced small business owner myself, I understand the challenges you’re experiencing and often it’s about helping you ask the right questions to help you make progress towards achieving your goals. Whether it’s getting started with your first business or growing and maybe exiting your existing small business. I can help you get there. To find out more about my business coaching services and to schedule your free coaching consultation, please visit the how of business.com. Take that next step today towards finally realizing your business ownership dreams. I look forward to speaking with you soon. Okay, so that’s that brainstorming process. Again, we’re not saying this is easy. Like you said, it even surprised me when you said it again that it was six to nine months before he got this right. And this is an intelligent person. We’re talking about a very experienced, intelligent, capable person. So it has nothing to do with int intelligence, it’s just a skill that he had not developed to this level prior.

David Begin (18:12):

It is a skill, but also I wanted him to understand me and how I thought about things and how I ran things, and that’s just going to take time.

Henry Lopez (18:21):

That’s going to take time.

David Begin (18:22):

But he was probably the only person that I ever hired at that level that finally got it. And so when I could see that our decisions were matching up and our thought processes were matching up for the most part, then it made me feel so much more comfortable. I could let go, give him more responsibility, give him more decision-making authority and everything kind of fell into place for me and I’d never had seen that before until that time with that person

Henry Lopez (18:55):

Having been there at that time and observing. What I saw that was very different though, that you’re pointing to is with others team members. We used to joke about this, that you were expecting people to read your mind here with him. You invested the time to share with him what your thought process was on these things,

David Begin (19:14):

Right? Yeah.

Henry Lopez (19:15):

That’s the investment of time that you alluded to earlier. This is not easy, right?

David Begin (19:20):

Yeah, of course. If you’re expecting people, and again, you don’t expect people to read your mind, but you act like you’re expecting him to read your mind, do your actions match your words on that? And plus, you’re also doing a lot of the thinking for them if you’re taking over the decision-making authority.

Henry Lopez (19:45):

So that was step number two to brainstorm three possible solutions. That’s the three and the 1, 3 1 and the one at the end is to choose one solution. So you might say something like, finally we’ll evaluate these options and decide on one to move forward with which one do you think would have the biggest impact? Which one? I like to say which one moves the needle or which one is more realistic? The other thing, sometimes we apply the low hanging fruit type approach if it makes sense in this situation and less discussed and very quickly the pros and cons as we were talking about thinking a few steps ahead of choosing that one decision or choosing that one option rather. If it all makes sense, then let’s do that first, right? Let’s move forward then in confidence knowing that we’re not always going to get it right, but we need to make a choice. Yes,

David Begin (20:32):

Right? And ask of why did you choose this option instead of the other two?

Henry Lopez (20:38):

Or if I’m overridden and saying, well, we’re going to go this route, here’s why.

David Begin (20:44):

And again, you’ve got to encourage that person because you’re not choosing their choice and they’re going to say, well, I’m not. I’m never going to do that again.

Henry Lopez (20:51):

That’s right. That’s right.

David Begin (20:54):

That’s not the point of the exercise. The exercise is you went through the thinking process, you came up with a solution. Here’s why I’m choosing number two instead of number one, but I think your thinking is good. I want you to consider the liability part of the equation when we’re making decisions like that because in the businesses we had, there was quite a bit of risk and liability issues, but encourage ’em even if you didn’t choose their decision that they’re going through the process. Well, and the good news is going to, as we talked about earlier, they’re going to come up with something that maybe you hadn’t thought of. Maybe you’re considering the liability issue, they’re considering the effect on the employees.

Henry Lopez (21:40):

That’s right.

David Begin (21:41):

And you hadn’t thought about that. So they’re bringing you valuable information that maybe might change your decision or you might have to take into consideration.

Henry Lopez (21:50):

And that’s why, as we’ve said, you’ve got to have open discussion throughout the whole process, especially as you’re teaching them, as you’re enabling them to apply this one through one problem solving method. You got to be willing to talk. You got to be able to be willing to invest that time. And I get it, that’s hard to do. You’re going to have times when people come to you and you need a quick decision or you don’t have the time and it’s frustrating. So you have to be very aware of how much are you investing in developing your team to be able to problem solve at this level.

David Begin (22:21):

Right?

Henry Lopez (22:22):

Okay. So then I think the step in teaching them is to clarify and simplify. Again, it’s find one problem that we’re going to address. What’s the most important problem here? Ideally a root cause problem. If possible, brainstorm the three possible solutions. That’s the three, and then choose one solution that we’re going to move forward with. You want ’em to apply this method regularly. It’s not just in a, Hey, we’ve got this problem, how do we fix it? A pump is down or something’s not working or a system is down, but also in team meetings or in other environments or in other gatherings or in other decision-making scenarios, maybe we’re planning for next year apply this method of brainstorming so that it becomes part of how you problem solve. Not just you but your team.

David Begin (23:15):

Agreed. And I think the one way you apply this regularly is you always ask when somebody comes to you with a problem or wants you to make a decision that you always ask, what do you think?

Henry Lopez (23:26):

Yes.

David Begin (23:28):

And that’ll stop ’em in their tracks sometimes and say, well, if you’ve got a few minutes, why don’t you come back in five minutes and think about it and then let me know what you thought. And you can do that very nicely, politely, but don’t engage that person until they come to you with some ideas.

Henry Lopez (23:48):

That’s right. Don’t enable them to shortcut that. However, as we’ve said on the flip side, the thing that can shut this down and make this an effective right quick is if you then undermine them or ridicule or don’t value the potential solutions that they’ve come up with, if they’re completely off base like the three solutions make no sense. I got a lot of work to do here, and what it uncovers is someone who really isn’t either is not thinking about the problem or has a lot of other skills development to go, so understand why are they so far off base? What is it that they are missing that there are nowhere close to solutions that make sense? But that’s not what I’ve typically found, David, with the right team leaders, that’s not usually the problem. What do you think?

David Begin (24:42):

Yeah, I think it just takes practice and time. So they’re going to come up with solutions based on their view of the world, which is good. You’re going to want to understand their view of the world, but you want them to also understand your view of the world. And so you could always ask them when they come up with a decision, how did you arrive at that decision? Why did you make this choice? And then see what they say. Now, again, at the beginning, you’re not going to get a lot of really good answers on that, so you got to keep encouraging. But if they know that when they come in and ask you to make a decision and they know you’re going to say, what do you think? Well, chances are eventually they’re not going to come in without an answer. And so when they start coming in with an answer, then you say, how did you arrive at that decision? What were your thought points that made you arrive at choosing this decision? They’re going to be prepared for those things. So consistency, which is one thing you taught me, Henry operationally more than anything else, is being consistent with this will change their behavior and then they’ll start looking forward to this because they realize that you’re open, you’re going to be listening to what the options are. They can debate with you a little bit about why

Henry Lopez (26:01):

You value their opinion, you value their experience.

David Begin (26:06):

And I think it makes better employees because most employees feel like, oh, the boss never listens to me anyway. I don’t get to make decisions. It goes from just being a job to, I’m really making an impact here in this organization.

Henry Lopez (26:23):

And talented people want that and will go find that elsewhere if they don’t get it from you eventually,

David Begin (26:32):

I think good people love this s and so it’ll let you know who your good people that really want to make an impact in the are. And I’ll let you know people that maybe don’t want to do that.

Henry Lopez (26:47):

Yeah. I want to come back to this point of your view of the world because I think it’s so important here. The way I’m understanding that, and I look at that, David, is that, for example, let’s take an example. There’s a problem here related to a maintenance issue or something that needs to be repaired or fixed or replaced, and maybe that’s part of the decision, which is often a challenge. Do we fix this? Do we replace it? If that employee, you’ve not given them for all kinds of different reasons, visibility into the financial impacts of that, well then they’re working in a limited view. They don’t have that further perspective that we do. And it could be that that’s what makes sense for your environment, but I would challenge you to think about that. If you’re expecting your leaders to make decisions in certain areas, then give them the transparency to the information or the data that helps them come up with solutions. Does that make sense?

David Begin (27:44):

Yeah. That’s a great example that we spent a lot of time on, at least in the carwash business, was do I replace this or do I fix it? And my answer would always be, if we can fix it and it would be relatively inexpensive to fix it, let’s definitely fix it. One example was some of these water pumps that we use were three to $5,000 to replace. Well, you could buy a kit for 150 and replace most of the internal parts in it that wear out, and then you would have a pump that would be working again. And so we kept these pumps for years and years and years just getting what we call seal kits, replacing the seals and some of the diaphragms and things like that. And we were able to effectively put these pumps back online and for a fraction of the cost of a new one. Now an employee would, in their mind, their thinking might be, Hey, we want to get this fixed quickly, so let’s just get a new one and get it

Henry Lopez (28:48):

In. And it’s not my money. I don’t even know how much it costs.

David Begin (28:52):

I don’t have any idea. I have no idea. So where I said, no, you know what, it’s more cost effective to have a spare pump that we do that with. So we had maybe six or seven of them, and we had a couple spares that were always ready to go. So we could replace it, put a refurbished one or the new one on. We could take that one off, we can fix it and have that one ready to go.

Henry Lopez (29:18):

Yeah. Yeah. It’s such a great example. Another example, coming back to the marketing example that I used a moment ago, if I have somebody who’s helping me make decisions on marketing, but they don’t know for example, what my marketing budget is or what my customer acquisition cost is, well then if they suggest, well, let’s just spend more money, and I look at them, are you crazy? We can’t afford that. Well, if I haven’t given them those optics, if I haven’t given them those parameters, then they’re not going to be able to help me make that kind of a decision.

David Begin (29:50):

Yeah, I would agree with that. So we had a client last week we talked to, and we’re kind of going through doing our discovery phase with them and they said they want their site managers, we want our site managers think like owners. How do we do that? I said, well, number one, they’re not owners, so they’re not going to necessarily always think owners, but there’s probably a lot of information that you’re not explaining to them in the bigger picture of managing car washes and owning car washes. That might be helpful for them. But I hear that term being thrown around a lot. Hey, you got to think like an owner. I tell people, no, that’s such a bad expectation for that employee. Agreed. Agreed. Because you’re setting ’em up to fail. Because if they felt like an owner,

Henry Lopez (30:36):

They would be an owner, they would be an owner, they’re, there’s no way they can understand that. And that’s not to diminish anybody, it’s just not possible right now if you tell them, I want you to take ownership of a particular part of the business that now we have ways we’re going to measure that, let’s say increasing sales or reducing customer acquisition costs or increasing customer retention, and that’s how I measure you and perhaps, ideally compensate you. Okay. Now you can take ownership of that piece of it where you have direct impact, but nobody can act as the owner except for the owner. Yeah.

David Begin (31:18):

Yeah. I like that term better. I hadn’t thought about, I want you to take ownership and I’ll teach you how to take ownership.

Henry Lopez (31:24):

That’s right.

David Begin (31:25):

But if you’re out there using that term with your employees, then we want our managers think like owners, just stop it. Don’t do that.

Henry Lopez (31:31):

Yeah, it’s not possible. Stop it. Stop it. We’ve touched on these, but I just want to recap the benefits that I’ve seen, and I think you’ll realize over time of using the 1-3-1problem solving method. We’ve been talking about empowering your teams. So empowering them to solve problems independently. I cannot put enough emphasis on that, on how much it’ll relieve you from having to make every darn decision every day, allowing you to scale, allowing you to step back, allowing you to take some time off, whatever the case might be. It reduces dependency on management and the business owner. It accelerates decision making. That’s the other thing. It actually, instead of paralyzing and everybody waiting around for you to make the decision, but David’s not here yet today, it’ll actually accelerate decision making and creates confidence. It reframes the challenges from reactive, from a reactive environment to sometimes a very proactive environment because they’re starting to think ahead instead of focusing on what’s wrong.

Henry Lopez (32:35):

Your team, your leaders, regardless of size are going to be encouraged to constructively, how do we move forward? How do we solve this? They’ll start anticipating things, is what I found. So you’re fostering strategic thinking and boosting accountability is the point I was just making about taking ownership of particular part of the business and then developing critical thinking skills. That’s such a big area. I think that’s one of the areas I suspect all of us wish our leaders had more of, but this is one way to help them develop critical thinking skills. So those are some of the benefits, David.

David Begin (33:12):

And when you finally get to the point that the employee is coming to you and saying, here’s the problem. Here’s a couple solutions, here’s why I think we ought to do this particular solution. And then you go, you know what? That’s terrific. Just make it sell. Exactly. And when you start having interactions like that, that’s when you know you’ve gotten this process to the point where you want it, and it does take patience. It takes your willingness and a mindset to want to be able to teach employees to do this, but you’re going to make a much better employee if you can teach them to do this and it’s going to make their life a lot happier and better. It’s going to make your life a lot happier and better,

Henry Lopez (33:55):

And you’re going to end up with a much more powerful culture, a place that you’re going to much more enjoy to show up for work at. Right? You’re just going to eliminate, there’s so many clients I work with who are earlier stages who just dread going in because they know, I haven’t even checked my emails yet. I’m going to have 50 questions. I’m going to have all of these problems. So you begin to alleviate so much of that, and I find that the beginning to do this brings that fun back into allowing you to do what you enjoy as well.

David Begin (34:27):

Right, right.

Henry Lopez (34:28):

Alright. So

David Begin (34:30):

It starts with the phrase, what do you think?

Henry Lopez (34:32):

Exactly. What do you think? Exactly. So think about that. When people come to your teams, come to you with a problem, we’ve got this problem, this is broken, what do you think? And then you’re going to start teaching them this method, the 1-3-1method, identify the one problem that we’re trying to solve here. Ideally the root cause of possible generate three possible solutions. Sometimes you brainstorm with them, at least initially, that’s the way to do it. Teach them how to do that. You can’t just expect them to figure this out by just saying, Hey, do the 1, 3 1. So you help them with that. Then over time, you’re going to see that they’ll do that. They’ll come to you already with three possible solutions and then you choose one. And over time you’re going to find that, as David said, as they learn how you make decisions and why you make decisions, they’ll start to start behaving like you in the decision making process. Alright. Any last thoughts on this before we wrap it up?

David Begin (35:29):

No. Good stuff. It’s a lot of fun when you do this. It changes the dynamic, the tone and tenor of your team. And I’m team, I really encourage you to try this.

Henry Lopez (35:39):

Yeah, I mean like you shared as an example, David, you saw this firsthand with your area manager that you developed to this point, how it empowered him to make decisions, how much better of an environment it created for you, the peace of mind that it gave you, and you were years into the business by the time you got there and you finally figured this part of it out.

David Begin (36:04):

Yeah. It was so much fun though, once I got there. So I really encourage you, if you’re struggling with trying to get your employees to be, feel empowered, make decisions, doing what they need to do, this is a great tool. Just be patient with it.