6 Problems

Learn—Problems

Writing to Address Problems

As a professional, you will have to solve problems every day. Some problems you can solve with a quick conversation:

Other problems you’ll need to discuss with your colleagues during a meeting:

And some problems you’ll have to write about.

For example, if you are a supervisor, you might need to write a letter documenting a problem with one of your employee’s performances. Because personnel issues have to be documented, you would always put these types of problems in writing.

Or perhaps, as in the example above, you feel your department is understaffed, and you want to hire a new member for your team. Any request that involves significant cost—another salary—has to be written down because it has to be approved at multiple levels.

Perhaps your team works with your company’s engineers to sell filtration systems to hospitals and care facilities. A hospital won’t purchase your product unless you can convince them that not having it is a problem. Because a filtration system costs thousands of dollars, a hospital would want all the details in writing so they can make an educated decision.

Any writing you do involves a certain level of persuasion. Just getting someone to read what you write is an act of persuasion. But writing about problems is one of the most persuasive forms of writing, which makes it challenging.

As with any writing challenge, if you understand the structure and the process, you can write the document. When you write to propose a solution to a problem, you should follow this process:

1. Identify the problem.
2. Convince your readers that your problem is their problem too.
3. Provide a solution.
4. Develop a plan of action.
5. Provide a plan for implementing the solution.

Let’s look at each part of the process in more detail.

Identify the Problem

When you write about a problem, you have more information than your readers. After all, you are the one who identified the problem. However, that doesn’t mean your readers have the same level of familiarity or that they agree that what you consider a problem actually is one.

Consider this scenario.

You’ve identified the problem, but how do you convince your employee to agree with you?

Convince Your Readers the Problem Affects Them

If we want to convince someone that they have a problem, we must look at it from their perspective, not our own.

Let’s go back to our scenario.

From your employee’s perspective, the problem isn’t that they’re late and don’t get their work done and need days off. The problem is that their life is complicated, and they can’t help it.

This might be true, but as the supervisor, you also have to consider how this employee’s behavior affects the company.

When team members have to use their time to do the other person’s work, they fall behind in their own work. This means the entire department falls behind, which reflects poorly on you. But how do you make this clear to the source of the problem?

Show Empathy

Acknowledge that you understand that outside issues are currently affecting them. Express concern and sympathy. For example, you might say this:

Three Examples Expressing Concern and Sympathy

This response shows that you understand because you’ve had the same problem. You also offer a potential solution. Most importantly, you didn’t shame or blame.

Explain Your Perspective

You can’t just ignore the problem. Even though you are sympathetic, the person’s behavior is affecting everyone negatively. If the problem isn’t solved, the employee’s job will be at risk, and it is only fair that they understand this. You could explain your perspective this way:

Summarize the Problem

When you summarize the problem, you clearly state what is at stake for everyone:

Provide a Solution

Once everyone agrees that a real problem exists, you can propose a solution to fix it. Your solution must

• Address the issue.
• Be realistic.

Address the Issue

In our scenario, you need to find a solution for your employee’s lateness, missed deadlines, and excessive requests for personal days. Your proposed solution could be a simple “You must stop,” but that solution won’t work. If they could just stop they probably would. You need to analyze the source of the problem and work from there:

• The employee is often late because they have to drop their child off at school.
• Your employee misses deadlines because they lose time at the beginning of the day and can’t work late because they must pick up their child.
• Your employee has to request personal days because they have to stay home when school is closed or when their child is sick.

Based on these issues, what possible and realistic solutions can you suggest? Remember, possible and realistic are key. But what does possible mean? Your solution has to be fair, ethical, and approved by your company.

It wouldn’t be fair or ethical to tell the employee they can simply come in later and leave earlier than everyone else. And this would never be approved.

A realistic solution is one that can be easily implemented. Would it be easy to implement a plan that allowed the employee to work on Saturday to make up hours they missed during the week? No. If your company has never let anyone work weekends, there is no structure in place for this to happen.

These solutions are both possible and realistic:

• Offer the employee the opportunity to work from home when necessary.
• Offer the employee flex time so they can work outside normal business hours.

Of course, every employee would have to be given the same opportunity, so again, you would need to get this plan approved.

Develop a Plan of Action

Now that you’ve developed a creative and reasonable solution, you have to develop a plan of action: When and how will this all take place?

A plan of action is very similar to a set of instructions, because you must provide a numbered list of the steps that must be completed to make the solution a reality:

1. You and the employee will meet to create a flexible schedule. Two days a week the employee will work ten hours so that they can work six hours the other three days.
2. The employee will learn how to use Teams to stay in touch with the other employees when working from home.
3. The employee will meet with an HR member to formalize their new work schedule.
4. You will create a timeline for the transition.

Once you have done the work of creating a solution, you need to put your findings into a short report so that your supervisor can approve it and you can move forward.

How to Structure a Problem/Solution Document

When you write about a problem and solution, your document should include the following sections:

• Introduction
• Problem
• Solution
• Plan of Action
• Conclusion

Let’s look at each of these sections more closely.

Introduction

Every document begins with an introduction, and the same is true for documents that address problems. Your introduction should state your purpose for writing, provide any necessary background information, and include a road map and a transition.

This is the same structure we looked at in the “Structure” module.

Problem

In this section, you need to do several things:

Provide any necessary background information. Remember, just because you are familiar with the causes of the problems and the people involved doesn’t mean your reader is.

State the problem

When you are writing about problems and solutions, you don’t want to be subtle, and you don’t want to be passive-aggressive. Just state the problem:

This statement suggests something dire might happen, but the writer is so vague no one would be able to respond with anything other than a question. No one wants to waste time on a string of unnecessary emails, so just say what you mean.

This statement works because it quantifies the problem and states the result.

If the writer really cared about not wasting the reader’s time, they wouldn’t have sent this cryptic message.

Because this statement clearly identifies the writer’s problem, the reader can consider an appropriate answer without the need for unnecessary questions.

Convince Your Reader the Problem Affects Them

If you decide to move to a new address that is farther from your workplace than your previous address, you will have to make adjustments.

However, while having to get up an hour earlier to make the longer drive is a problem for you, it is not a problem that affects your coworkers, supervisors, or company, so you can’t reasonably ask to be allowed to arrive an hour late each day.

However, if someone you supervise is arriving late each day for that very reason, you do have a problem that is work related. That person’s tardiness is affecting their ability to get their work done and is putting pressure on the other members of the team.

You will have to convince that person that their tardiness is a problem for both the company and them. You might explain it this way:

As the writer makes clear, the employee’s actions not only negatively affect the team, but they also negatively affect the person and their success at their job. By demonstrating how the problem affects everyone, the writer is more likely to get cooperation from the person causing the problem. We are all the source of the problem sometime, whether we realize it or not. If we can’t convince the other person that the problem is going to affect them negatively, they aren’t likely to consider the problem worth solving.

Solution

Once you identify a problem, you need to offer a realistic solution that addresses the problem. This might sound simple, but it’s easy to either offer a solution that doesn’t address the problem or offer a solution that isn’t reasonable.

Let’s look at some solutions to a problem:

A valued employee didn’t get a promotion because they don’t have the necessary experience.

This solution doesn’t address the issue. How will an extra week of vacation give the employee the training they need? This solution isn’t reasonable. Are you going to offer everyone an extra week of vacation?

This solution addresses the issue—lack of training—and is reasonable because the company often approves training for qualified employees.

Plan of Action

A solution is only a good one if it can be made reality. Making a solution real requires a plan, and that plan must be specific. In this case, your best choice is a list of the steps that must be completed to make the solution happen. You also need to explain who is responsible for completing each step. When you tell your reader how a process will be completed, you want to use a numbered list:

1. Meet with employee to create training schedule.
2. Pay for scheduled training.
3. Meet with employee after each session for progress report.

Even though your reader might not be part of the process, they will want to be sure you have a valid plan before they approve your proposed solution.

Conclusion

Very rarely will you solve a problem without help from others, so use the conclusion to offer thanks and make it clear that you are part of the process and your door is open.

Let’s look at an example. The following memo was written by an employee to their supervisor:

This example follows all of the best practices we have been discussing in this module. Use this as a model when doing your own writing.

But what should you do if you have a problem but you haven’t been able to find a solution? Do not worry. This happens a lot.

What if I Do Not Have a Solution?

Sometimes you might face a problem you can’t solve alone. In fact, your problem is that you have a problem you can’t solve. In those cases, you need to ask for help. In many ways, this type of document is similar to a standard problem/solution document with one major shift. Let’s look at an example:

This email contains all the standard pieces of a problem/solution document:

Assess—Problems

1. Which of the following is NOT a problem you would address at work?
   a. The need for a new employee
   b. The need for more office space
   c. Your need for a new car
   d. The need to update a billing process
2. Which of the following are part of the process of addressing a problem in writing?
   a. Identify the problem.
   b. Convince your readers that your problem is their problem too.
   c. Provide a solution.
   d. Develop a plan of action.
   e. All of the above
3. This is an effective statement of the problem:
   If we don’t address the potential issue of what could happen if overtime remains the same, I’m not sure what will happen.
   a. True
   b. False
4. This is an effective statement of the problem:
   I need to adjust my schedule because my childcare situation has changed, and I can no longer get to work by 8:00 am because I have to drop my son off at school each morning.\
   a. True
   b. False
5. Which of the following is the better solution?
   a. Offer them an extra week of vacation as a consolation.
   b. Offer to pay for a training course so that the employee can get the training they need to be prepared for the next opportunity.

Engage—Solving Problems

Problems are a regular part of work, and identifying and proposing solutions to those problems in writing is something you will be expected to do.

For this activity, your problem is an upcoming deadline that you will not be able to meet. Your task is to write to the person who can grant you an extension. In your memo, you should

• Identify the problem.
• Convince your readers that your problem is their problem.
• Provide a solution.
• Develop a plan of action.

Once your memo is complete

1. Post it to the discussion board.
2. Respond to at least three of your classmates.
3. Provide feedback on the following.
   The content of their memo
   The structure and design of their memo

Apply—Writing about Professional Problems

For this assignment, you must write a memo in response to the following prompt:

As with many departments, you and the members of your department have been working from home since the pandemic began. Now that business is beginning to return to normal, your company’s CEO has announced that plans are being made to transition back to the workplace. To make the transition as seamless as possible, each department has been asked to submit a memo in which they address the following:

• Employee concerns
• Employee needs
• A plan for making the transition based on the following scenario:

Your supervisor has asked you to talk to each of the seven members of your department and then draft a response to the CEO.

To complete this assignment successfully, follow these steps:

1. Present your information in the form of a memo that includes the required parts of a proposal.
2. Use headings to create a visual hierarchy.
3. Follow the guidelines for creating an effective structure.
4. Use proper English grammar and spelling conventions.
5. Meet your audiences’ needs.

For this assignment, you may create material concerning employee concerns and needs; however, your material must be realistic and should be based on your professional experience.

Assignment Rubric