Clarity: How to Begin Leading Change – PRO Attention (Part 3 of 6)

SECOND, PAY ATTENTION and identify when someone is expressing a PROBLEM (P), a desired REMEDY (R) to a problem, or a desired OUTCOME (O). 

I’ve lost count of the times I’ve asked people what they want, and they tell me what don’t want instead.

Now let’s look at a common desire, yet expressed differently as a Problem, a Remedy and an Outcome. 

• PROBLEM: I am tired of feeling heavy and being self-conscious about my weight (or fat).  I don’t want to be oversized anymore. 

• REMEDY:  I want to lose weight. I want to reduce my food intake. 

• OUTCOME: I want to feel light. I want to feel agile. I want to eat healthy and intuitively. I want to feel and look good. 

Now let’s look at what happens in organisational change.

Here are some  PROBLEM statements that you may have heard before: 

Everybody has no idea what’s going on!

They keep doing things the old way and are so resistant to change!

I am tired of people not reading their e-mails, not turning up in briefings, not attending training sessions, and being late in meetings.

Executives want change but they’re not being supportive.

In contrast to problems, you may have also heard REMEDIES like these:

We needed to reduce the amount of work on everybody’s plate.

Employees are getting frustrated with the new process, so we’ve hired more trainers to deliver more training sessions.

We documented in detail processes for people to follow.

Work is piling up so we’re hiring more contractors. 

Then, every now and then, there are those who go beyond problems and remedies to articulate OUTCOMES, for instance:

We have to be more productive.

We needed to be more efficient with our limited resources.

We streamlined steps in our processes and simplified the work.

We used available technology to automate manual work.

We just needed to be more systematic and organised.

As a next step, train yourself to pay attention and make the distinction when you or others are speaking in terms of a Problem, a Remedy or an Outcome.

Once you detect a Problem or Remedy statement, be prepared to reframe it into an Outcome statement. This brings you closer to a much clearer and more compelling call for change.

Note: This PRO Model was developed by James Lawley and Penny Tompkins who are thought leaders in the field of Clean Language. They created Symbolic Modelling as a result of modelling the work of David Grove.