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Why Most Problem Solving Workshops Are Rubbish (And How to Fix Yours)

The bloke from head office walks into our Adelaide workshop last month wearing a crisp shirt and clipboard. "Right, team, we're going to solve all our problems today!" he announces with the enthusiasm of someone who's never actually worked a day on the floor. Three hours later, half the room's asleep, the other half's checking their phones, and the only problem we've solved is how to waste everyone's Tuesday afternoon.

Sound familiar? Course it does.

I've been running problem solving workshops for Australian businesses since 2009, and I reckon 78% of them are about as useful as a chocolate teapot. But here's the thing - the remaining 22% are absolute gold. They transform teams, save companies thousands, and actually get results. The difference? They're built on real problems, not textbook theories.

The Real Problem with Problem Solving Training

Most workshops start with the wrong premise. They assume your team doesn't know how to think. Wrong. Your people solve problems every bloody day - they just don't know they're doing it. When the printer jams, when a client changes their mind, when the delivery's late - that's all problem solving. The issue isn't capability; it's structure and confidence.

I learned this the hard way back in 2011 when I was running a session for a manufacturing company in Geelong. Spent the first hour explaining root cause analysis to a room of engineers who'd been troubleshooting machinery for decades. The plant manager finally spoke up: "Mate, we know what's broken. We just need permission to fix it properly instead of patching it up."

Lightbulb moment. Right there.

What Actually Works: The Five-Problem Method

Forget the fancy frameworks for a minute. Here's what I've found works consistently across industries, from mining companies in Perth to tech startups in Melbourne.

Start with five real problems your business is facing right now. Not hypothetical scenarios from a training manual. Real issues that are costing you money, time, or sleep. Write them on a whiteboard where everyone can see them.

Problem one might be "Customers complaining about wait times." Problem five could be "New staff taking too long to get up to speed." Doesn't matter what they are, as long as they're genuine headaches your team recognises.

Now here's the controversial bit - don't try to solve all five in one session. Pick one. The meatiest, most frustrating one that makes everyone in the room groan when you mention it. That's your target.

The Goldfish Bowl Technique

This is where things get interesting, and it's something I picked up from watching my daughter's year 8 debating team (don't ask me how that connection happened - wine may have been involved).

Split your group into three circles. The inner circle gets five chairs around a small table - these are your active problem solvers. The middle circle sits around them - these are the observers. The outer circle stands at the back - these are the fresh eyes.

The inner circle attacks the problem for 15 minutes. No interruptions from anyone else. They can talk, argue, draw diagrams, whatever they need to do. The observers watch and take notes on what they're seeing - patterns, blind spots, assumptions being made. The outer circle just listens.

After 15 minutes, rotate. Middle circle moves in, inner circle goes to outer, outer circle takes the middle. Fresh perspectives, different approaches, new energy.

I've seen this method crack problems that had been lingering for months. A logistics company in Darwin used it to redesign their entire delivery routing system. Saved them 40% on fuel costs. The solution came from their newest employee who'd been standing in that outer circle, seeing patterns the experienced drivers had stopped noticing.

The Post-It Note Rebellion

Here's where I'm going to upset some of you: throw out the traditional brainstorming rules. You know the ones - "no bad ideas," "build on others' thoughts," "defer judgement." Rubbish. Complete rubbish.

Instead, give everyone a stack of post-it notes and tell them to write down every half-baked, potentially terrible idea they can think of. One idea per note. No discussing. No building. Just brain dumping for ten minutes straight.

Then comes the fun part - the rebellion phase. Everyone walks around and puts a big red X on any idea they think is stupid, unworkable, or just plain wrong. No explanations needed. Just mark it and move on.

What you'll find is that the ideas with no red X marks are usually pretty solid. But more importantly, some of the ideas with the MOST red X marks turn out to be brilliant when you dig deeper. The ones that make everyone uncomfortable often challenge fundamental assumptions about how things "should" work.

A creative problem solving workshop I ran for a retail chain used this method to tackle their inventory problem. The "stupidest" idea on the board was to let customers see stock levels in real-time on their phones. Half the room thought it was insane - why would you show customers when you're running low? The other half realised it could drive urgency and reduce disappointment. They implemented it six months later and saw a 23% increase in conversion rates.

Why Traditional Root Cause Analysis Fails

Let me be controversial again: the five whys technique is overrated. There, I said it. Fight me.

Don't get me wrong - asking "why" is important. But limiting yourself to exactly five is like saying you can only use five tools to build a house. Sometimes you need three whys, sometimes you need seven, and sometimes you need to ask "what if" instead.

The problem with rigid root cause analysis is that it assumes there's always one root cause. In my experience, most business problems are like a messy spider web - pull on one thread and three others tighten up somewhere else.

Better approach? Start with "what's working well?" instead of "what's broken?" If your customer service is getting complaints but your sales team is hitting targets, there might be a disconnect between expectations set during the sale and delivery capability. That's not a root cause - that's a systems integration issue.

I worked with a construction company in Brisbane where delays were constant. Traditional root cause analysis kept pointing to subcontractor reliability. But when we looked at what was working well - their planning and estimation processes - we realised the real issue was that they were too good at selling tight timelines and not good enough at building in buffer time. Solution wasn't better subcontractors; it was better expectation management with clients.

The Energy Audit Method

This one's borrowed from lean manufacturing, but it works brilliantly for any team problem. Before diving into solutions, do an energy audit of your current process.

Map out every step of how you currently handle whatever problem you're trying to solve. But instead of just listing the steps, rate each one on energy: does this step energise people (green), drain people (red), or neither (yellow)?

You'll be amazed at how many red steps exist in your current process that add no value but suck the life out of your team. These aren't necessarily the "problem" - they're the friction that makes real problems harder to solve.

A hospitality group I worked with in Cairns discovered that their staff scheduling process had eleven red steps - including three different approval levels for a simple shift swap. No wonder their casual staff were unreliable; it was easier to just not show up than navigate the bureaucracy of finding a replacement.

When you're designing solutions in your workshop, every new step needs to be green or yellow. If you're adding red steps, you're not solving the problem - you're moving it somewhere else.

Making Decisions When Nothing's Perfect

Here's the reality nobody talks about in those glossy business problem solving courses: most business decisions are made with incomplete information under time pressure while other fires are burning. Your workshop needs to prepare people for that reality, not pretend it doesn't exist.

I use something called "good enough to start" decision making. Instead of trying to find the perfect solution, find the best solution you can implement in the next two weeks that will make things 30% better. Not perfect. Not permanent. Just better.

Then plan for iteration. What will you measure to know if it's working? When will you review and adjust? What's your plan if it makes things worse?

This approach takes the pressure off finding the "right" answer and puts focus on finding the "next" answer. It's surprisingly liberating for teams who've been paralysed by analysis.

The Follow-Up Framework That Actually Works

Here's where most workshops fail spectacularly: the follow-up. Everyone leaves feeling motivated and energised, then two weeks later it's business as usual and nothing's changed.

Simple fix: end every workshop by scheduling the next one. Not a follow-up meeting. Another workshop. Four weeks later. Same people, same room, one agenda item: what happened with the solution we implemented?

This does two things. First, it creates accountability - people know they'll have to report back on progress. Second, it treats problem solving as an ongoing skill to develop, not a one-off event.

In that second workshop, you're not just reviewing results. You're analysing your problem-solving process. What worked? What didn't? What would you do differently next time? You're teaching your team to get better at getting better, which is worth its weight in gold.

The Uncomfortable Truth About Solutions

I'm going to finish with something that might make you uncomfortable: good problem solving workshops often create more problems than they solve. At least initially.

When you start examining how things really work in your business, you uncover all sorts of inefficiencies, workarounds, and patches that people have been ignoring. It's like cleaning out a garage - it gets messier before it gets tidier.

That's normal. That's healthy. That's progress.

The teams that embrace this messy middle period are the ones that see real transformation. The ones that panic and try to go back to the old way of doing things just waste everyone's time and create cynicism about future improvement efforts.

So if you're planning a problem solving workshop for your team, go in with realistic expectations. You're not going to solve everything in one session. You're not going to create perfect processes. You're not going to eliminate all friction from your business.

What you will do is build capability, create momentum, and establish a framework for ongoing improvement. And if you do it right, with real problems and proper follow-through, that's more than most businesses ever achieve.

The best part? Once your team gets a taste of actually solving problems instead of just talking about them, they'll keep doing it long after the workshop ends. Because solving problems feels good. Much better than complaining about them.

Now stop reading about it and go book a room for next week. Your problems aren't going to solve themselves, and neither are your team's problem-solving skills. The only way forward is through, and the only time to start is now.

Besides, if you wait for the perfect time to run a problem solving workshop, you've already failed the first test of problem solving: taking action with imperfect information. Don't be that person. Be the one who gets things done.

Even if it's not perfect. Even if you need to learn through team building activities that don't go quite as planned. Even if your first workshop is a bit of a disaster. At least you'll have real data about what doesn't work, which is infinitely more valuable than theoretical knowledge about what should work.

And trust me, after 15 years of running these sessions, the disasters often teach you more than the successes. They just don't feel as good at the time.