Does solving a problem only create more problem?

I had the pleasure of meeting and listening to Peter de Jager this morning. I had heard him speak in Boston in April and arranged to have him come to our facility to speak to our management team members. He once again spoke eloquently, with a great deal of humour and real life images we can all relate to about change and not just embracing it, but accepting it, running with it and changing the status quo.

After he left and I found myself without a technical problem to fix (that’s the only reason I get invited to these meeting) I read several pages of his “Truth Picks“. One entry that really stood out for me was his response to the quote “If you think the problem is bad now, just wait until we’ve solved it!” – Arthur Kasspe. Peter writes how often the solution to one problem creates another perhaps many others. One analogy is that emails are faster to send then writing out a memo/letter, but because it is faster we can make more of them, send more of them, and ultimately fill our inboxes faster then we can keep up with reading the million memos.

It got me to thinking about our latest computer glitches around here. I work in an organization where not everyone has access to email. “Egads!” you say. Yes it’s true. In trying to fix the network and implement new servers that will hopefully soon accomplish this task, the current system is crawling to a halt. What should take an hour takes 3. I spend more time staring at that little hour glass then anything else and have lost more more from computer crashes in the last 3 months then in my entire life.

What’s the solution….I’m not sure, but it feels like we (and I mean the world) has decided that this is okay. We will fix one problem, we know it will create more, but it gives us something else to do when this one is solved.