Problem solving under pressure
I was asked recently by the leader of a critical infrastructure maintenance team how to approach problem solving under pressure — when the stakes are high and time is limited. It’s a great question. So, here’s what I shared.
We default to what we know
When we’re under pressure, our brains are wired to seek certainty and avoid ambiguity. It’s an instinct that helps us act quickly, but it comes with a potentially hazardous trade-off.
And that is, we often jump to conclusions which can cause us to misdiagnose the real problem and apply solutions that fit what we know, rather than what the situation really needs.
With increased time pressure and high stakes, the risk of judgement errors rises in exponentially.
In the 1960s American philosopher, Abraham Kaplan coined the phrase, “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”
In other words, our brains naturally default to familiar patterns to help us see problems and choose solutions.
Under pressure, our minds default to this programming and bypass our conscious reasoning.
A former neighbor of mine is an emergency physician. He would jump in a helicopter and abseil down a cliff face to rescue someone who had fallen and injured themselves. I asked him over dinner one time how he decided in spit seconds what the problem was and how to best to treat it. His response: “Pattern recognition.”
Researchers have found our conscious mind processes information at a rate of 10 bps but our nervous system and senses take in around 1 billion bps. Our eyes alone take in over 10 million bps.
Pattern recognition is our subconscious taking over the drivers seat of problem solving. It’s how Formula 1 drivers can react in milliseconds to avoid crashing when travelling at over 300 km an hour.
For the most part, relying on subconscious pattern recognition works well to solve problems. But without awareness of the tricks our minds can play on us when under pressure, overusing our experience can work to undermine and make worse the problems we need to solve.
For example, misdiagnosis under pressure in healthcare can have severe consequences. In a case study published in Medicine Today a general practitioner failed to diagnose an ectopic pregnancy due to over relying on a quick judgement of symptoms. A lesser viral infection was determined instead and medication to treat that prescribed.
When symptoms worsened a few weeks later, the patient was rushed to hospital and required removal of one of her fallopian tubes to properly treat her condition. It’s a situation that could have been prevented.
In Australia, an estimated 140,000 diagnostic errors occur each year, leading to about 21,000 cases of serious harm and up to 4,000 deaths. Up to one in seven medical diagnoses are incorrect according to Professor Ian Scott of the University of Queensland.
Thinking errors under pressure are estimated to cause more than 75% of medical misdiagnoses. Almost one in two malpractice claims brought against general practitioners involves diagnostic error.
We also over analyse and freeze
The tension of being in the “unknowing zone” when under pressure can also trigger survival responses. The two most common are to over analyse (flight) or not act (freeze).
Both are coping mechanisms biologically programmed to help us avoid danger when we sense it. We all have tendencies towards one or the other. Mine is to overanalyse.
So what’s the best way to approach solving problems under pressure?
The smart way to approach it is to acknowledge the tension exists and use proven methods to help you make the right choices.
Prevention is the best cure to manage problem solving under pressure. Here are three proven strategies to put in your kit bag.
1. Pause and widen your perspective
When under pressure, before deciding on what the problem is or solution should be, pause and force yourself to look at the situation from another perspective.
The medical profession uses the term “differential diagnosis.” Where a second possibility is considered before settling on the problem and treatment.
In a non-medical scenario, it’s how Pringles decided what problem to solve when they received research that 43% of customers got their hand stuck in the cylinder containing their chips and were annoyed by it.
To make the packaging bigger and avoid hands getting stuck it them could have cost $50 million to implement world wide. Instead they decided to spend $5 million on adverting to say their iconic packaging was worth getting your hand occasionally stuck in it.
This approach turned a common complaint into a brand celebration, resulting in over 2 billion impressions and a 96.5% positive sentiment.
2. Ask “why” five times
Asking “why” five times is a quick but powerful way to get to the root cause of a problem and avoids reacting to surface symptoms.
By repeatedly questioning the reason behind each answer, you challenge assumptions that can be blinding under pressure and reveal the systemic or behavioural issues that created the problem in the first place.
This method is simple, fast, and widely used in the management consulting, engineering, quality improvement and technology industries.
3. Use checklists and protocols
The aviation, engineering, medical and safety professions all make use of checklists and protocols to overcome the limitations of our minds when it comes to choosing the right solution to use under pressure and fatigue.
In the 1960s routine monitoring of four vital signs (blood pressure, temperature, pulse and respiration) along with escalation protocols became a standard hospital practice performed by nurses. Before then patients were deteriorating without anyone noticing early enough to intervene.
The “vitals chart” was created as a way of showing this protocol was completed regularly and action taken when needed 24 hours a day.
For night shifts in particular, when our mind is fighting its natural circadian sleep rhythm, checklists and protocols like this have saved countless lives.
The key take away
The best way to solve problems under pressure isn’t to rely on expertise and experience alone.
It’s by recognising how easily your mind can jump to the wrong conclusions in these situations, and use methods that slow down the rush to fix it to reveal the real problem and have fool proof checklists to make sure the right solution is applied.
If you want to know more about leading practices using checklists to manage problem solving under pressure, check out Atul Gawande’s book, The Checklist Manifesto.