Problem Solver or Debate Winner

I recently gasped at the quite incredible notion of a British health service reform that somehow has been enacted quickly and effectively.

Now joining pretty much the rest of the globe, in the country of my birth a pharmacist can now dispense and array of meds previously the sole domain of a prescribing doctor.

Having seen how the world elsewhere manages this, I can say from personal experience, about bloody time.

Family practices, walk-in clinics and casualty departments will all now have their workload rebalanced for the good of themselves and their patients.

The supposed 'power' doctors have held over prescription exclusivity lost in part due to their self-shredding of reputational goodwill through a lengthy series of what the public overwhelmingly feel have been unwarranted strikes.

This has deep resonance with solution selling.

With apologies to nudger-in-chief Rory Sutherland [sub'n req'd], here's why;

How many simple solutions of this kind are within easy reach but routinely overlooked because of the peculiar nature of organisations? Is our current system uniquely ill-suited to solving practical problems like this? A weird class of people who have been in companies all their lives, or have previously worked as lawyers or academics, have been groomed for their ability to win arguments, not to solve problems. (The two skills are wildly different.) Does an obsession with adversarial point-scoring cause them to focus more on divisive issues than easy wins? Or is this the fault of TV and social media, both of which focus our attention on issues which rile colleagues up- or down-stream, rather than on common sense ideas on which normal business people can readily agree. Maybe there are a lot of people at the sharp-end doing useful work like this, but we never hear about them.

Recognise this condition?

Who in the buying unit you seek to persuade are the problem solvers? Or the arguers?

I almost sense a 2x2. Anyone for a 4-box where the one scale is the desire at one end to fix, sliding to where they instead only ever talk? Set against how they prefer either divisive or easy-win issues?

Away from that consultant lens, there's the flagging for forecast and qualification purposes.

Imagine asking your closest ally prospect-side in which boat their colleagues sit.

Argumentative or Solutionist?

Then work through with those sharing your view how they can prevail.