{"id":36135,"date":"2026-09-10T16:34:57","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T15:34:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/?post_type=article&p=36135"},"modified":"2026-09-10T16:36:45","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T15:36:45","slug":"if-you-want-to-empower-others-to-solve-you-first-need-to-understand-the-nature-of-the-problem","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/if-you-want-to-empower-others-to-solve-you-first-need-to-understand-the-nature-of-the-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"If you Want to Empower Others to Solve, you First Need to Understand the Nature of the Problem"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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\n 10 Sep 2026 <\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>Articles<\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t

If you Want to Empower Others to Solve, you First Need to Understand the Nature of the Problem<\/h1>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n \n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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At a recent Leaders Virtual Roundtable, John Bull of Management spelled out the difference between technical and adaptive problems and how understanding which is which is key to enabling others to innovate and find solutions.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

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By John Portch<\/h6>\n
In the late 1980s or early 1990s, McDonald\u2019s in Italy considered introducing \u2018McSpaghetti\u2019 to its menu.<\/h6>\n

They ultimately decided against doing so following an experiment that John Bull spoke about at a recent Leaders virtual roundtable.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat would be the cheapest, easiest way to test whether spaghetti was going to work as a product?\u201d he asked the table, before revealing the answer.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat one store did was just put it on the menu,\u201d he continued. \u201cThey didn\u2019t make any and they didn\u2019t even develop the product, but just took note of how many people asked for it from the menu. After three days, no one had asked, so they never even had to bother.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Bull, the Head of High Performance Research at Management Futures, the test was a success in learning terms and an example of intelligent experimentation and adaptive leadership. Any \u2018failure\u2019 was minimal.<\/p>\n

The story is cited by Kirk Vallis, the Global Head of Creativity Development at Google, where their first-generation Glass product proved to be an expensive flop.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey spent some phenomenal amount of money, in the tens of millions on this without really testing whether there was demand for it in the market,\u201d said Bull.<\/p>\n

Few companies have Google\u2019s scale, but their experience is not unique. It brings us back to the message behind this roundtable, which was titled \u2018Empower to Solve\u2019. He uses it to refer to situations where a leader must respond to a situation where the answer is unknown.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe key trap that we fall into is, when faced with uncertainty or sudden change, we feel pressured to come up with the answer. That is deeply misleading if we don\u2019t know what works,\u201d he continued, adding that it is often a skill that leaders struggle to master.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of us are conditioned to think of strong\u00a0 leadership as being linked to having the ability to give clear direction; and when you are in a time of uncertainty, if results aren\u2019t going as you would expect or like or the expectation on you, a lot of people will look to their leaders for guidance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bull cautioned against this approach. \u201cFaced with uncertainty, sudden change, we feel pressured to come up with the answer, but if we don\u2019t know what works, we should move into an \u2018empower to solve\u2019 response rather than defaulting to directive leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the course of an hour, Bull helped Leaders Performance Institute members to understand that, when facing adaptive challenges, their primary job shifts from providing answers to creating the conditions in which those answers can be unearthed.<\/p>\n

Empower to solve: a skill of adaptive leadership<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bull introduced the table to the typical skills found in good adaptive leaders and the traps they evade even in trying conditions. \u201cI think all of us will recognise these, and you\u2019ll certainly recognise them in your organisations. I think that they\u2019re fairly generic and fairly normal as traps\u201d<\/p>\n

Is your problem technical or adaptive?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bull cited the 2010 Copiap\u00f3 mining accident in Chile as a prime example of what it looks like when a leader empowers their people to solve a complex problem.<\/p>\n

A cave-in at the San Jos\u00e9 copper-gold mine in the Atacama Desert in August 2010 left 33 men trapped 700m (2,300ft) underground and 5km (3 miles) from the mine\u2019s entrance. They were all rescued 69 days later.<\/p>\n

The rescue was led by Andr\u00e9 Sougarret, a mining engineer with nearly three decades of experience in an area where accidents were all too common. Yet he was quick to call in others, from people at NASA to psychologists and geologists.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said to everyone: \u2018your experience is massively relevant here, but your expertise is not\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sougarret even adopted the idea of a 19-year-old American undergraduate who suggested a drilling technique that took six to eight weeks off the rescue.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a leader, I think I would have gone, \u2018tell the guy to buzz off\u2019,\u201d admitted Bull with a smile. The crucial point, he explained, is that a leader must figure out when \u2018empower to solve\u2019 is the best approach. For that, they must be able to distinguish between a technical and adaptive problem.<\/p>\n