It's late summer in the Gatineau Valley in Quebec. I'm with five friends, and we're on our way to the Cabonga Reservoir to fish. In the morning after an overnight stop in the forest of a provincial park, a light rain is falling. At this time of year in Quebec, any rain is cold and uncomfortable, so we're trying to fix flapjacks for breakfast. We're failing.
It has been a wet month, and we haven't found any dry wood. Despite many attempts, we can manage only a smoky little fire that's nowhere near hot enough for flapjacks.

"Father and son feast on pancakes, May 15, 1999." Photo by Paul Schnaittacher, for "World's Largest Pancake Breakfast," a Massachusetts Local Legacies project
We hear a vehicle crunching along the gravel road approaching our campsite, and soon a government pickup truck pulls up and stops in the empty campsite across from us. Three men hop out and one waves hello, calling to us in French. We wave back. Smiling, he comes over for a visit. He quickly figures out that we don't understand his French, and just as quickly, he figures out that we don't know what we're doing.
He points to our hatchet lying on a stone and says, "OK?" One of us replies, "Oui." He speaks about as much English as we do French.
With the hatchet, he begins splintering a large log lying beside our dysfunctional fire. He piles the splinters onto the fire, and they immediately explode into flame. He exclaims, "Bois sec! Bois sec!"
Making small adjustments
to what you're already
doing is often the answerOne of us remembers enough French to translate: "Dry wood! Dry wood!" We thank him and in mime we offer him breakfast, but he waves us off, and goes back across the road to rejoin his work mates.
Soon we're full of coffee and flapjacks.
When things aren't working, how do you find an approach that does work? Making small adjustments to what you're already doing is often the answer. But even when the adjustments do look small in retrospect, discovering them in the moment can require great imagination and insight. Here are some tips for finding small adjustments that have big impact.
- Assume that whatever you have to change will be small
- You're more likely to find an ingenious small adjustment if you're actually looking for one.
- Rewrite the problem description
- Write down a description of the problem. Then rewrite it so that it uses none of the same words, except prepositions, articles and the various forms of is.
- Get fresh eyes
- Find some people who haven't been working on the current approach. They're more likely to ask the right questions. Brief them and let them question everything.
- Explain it to some kids
- Children not only have fresh eyes, they have fresh brains. They can understand way more than you might think. To engage them, tell them you're stuck and ask for their help.
Next time your team is stuck, treat them to a breakfast of flapjacks. Tell them the story of bois sec and watch what happens. Top
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Related articles
More articles on Project Management:
The Injured Teammate: II
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do you handle it? Here are some suggestions for breaking the news to the team.
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When Change Is Hard: II
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Anticipating Absence: Passings
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rarely strike many co-workers in the same week, month, or year. There are exceptions — 9/11 was
one such. This pandemic is another.
Cost Concerns: Comparisons
- When we assess the costs of different options for solving a problem, we must take care not to commit
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error is comparing the costs of two options.
See also Project Management and Problem Solving and Creativity for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
Coming September 27: On Working Breaks in Meetings
- When we convene a meeting to work a problem, we sometimes find that progress is stalled. Taking a break to allow a subgroup to work part of the problem can be key to finding simple, elegant solutions rapidly. Choosing the subgroup is only the first step. Available here and by RSS on September 27.
And on October 4: Self-Importance and Conversational Narcissism at Work: I
- Conversational narcissism is a set of behaviors that participants use to focus the exchange on their own self-interest rather than the shared objective. This post emphasizes the role of these behaviors in advancing a narcissist's sense of self-importance. Available here and by RSS on October 4.
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