It is possible to find about 2,050,000,000 “problems” on the internet.

Often, problems do not get solved because they do not have an owner. They saunter around like orphans that are not taken care of.

This could be the case when a problem is too big to address for a single owner. Today, a local newspaper reviewed the situation about the shrinking of the Greenland Glaciers. It is a problem that might cause a disaster in the end, but which (impact) is nearly invisible at the moment. It is a standard long-term versus short-term issue where the former is not often favored. Until there is no real need, no action will be undertaken. Besides that, not everybody could be convinced that the melting will indeed cause a problem.

Problems that do get attention are those where the urgency is high. The Internet site of a company that goes down for example. The production process could delay because of a part that was not delivered (and previously purchased) by the purchase department. Or a constant jam in the traffic to your call center because of a lack of agents (the problem of giving stress to your agents). For this last issue the owner of the problem is the manager of the call center. Although...

There are available agents in the team next door, owned by another manager. The call overflow could be routed to this neighboring team (call center), but the problem will be shifted; to another team and to another moment in time.

It is not sexy to talk about problems. You should rather focus on a challenge. Either way, something needs to get solved. And that is no problem;

It is possible to find 3,230,000,000 “Solutions” on the Internet.

And that is another reason why problems do not always get an owner. It is much more interesting to own a solution. There are too many of them, the question is, do they solve "your" problem?

© 2006 Hans Bool

Hans Bool is the founder of Astor White a traditional management consulting company that offers online management advice. Astor Online solves issues in hours what normally would take days. You can apply for a free demo account

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Hans_Bool