People and Projects Podcast: Project Management Podcast · Andy Kaufman, PMP, PMI-ACP

PPP 486 | How to Solve Some of the Toughest Leadership Problems, with business coach Dr. Katie Best

·42 min·2 clips

Katie Best lays out the first two SOLVE steps: state the problem in one or two sentences, then open the box.

1. People and Projects Podcast episode 486 examines Dr. Katie Best's book 'The 10 Toughest Leadership Problems and How to Solve Them' and its five-step SOLVE framework. 2. Host Andy interviews Best, a business coach and author of the 'Dear Katie' leadership newsletter, whose background is the sociology of work and who coaches partners at law and accounting firms. 3. Best says she wrote the book because people at charities and lower organizational levels often can't access coaches, and procurement can be slow enough that 'you're onto a whole new set of problems.' 4. She defines performative busyness through the 'coat on the back of the chair' and keyboard-striking devices, and advises asking who actually gains from looking busy before it slides into workaholism. 5. The SOLVE steps are State the problem, Open the box (firsthand or desk research), Lay out your solution, Venture forth (anticipating obstacles like a tricky colleague named Emily), and Elevate your learning, a step she says 'never really features' in other models. 6. On decisions, she cites Amazon's 'two-way door' idea for reversible choices and the poker concept of 'tilt', recommending that leaders insert time before deciding when emotion clouds judgment. 7. Best distinguishes power, a long-term quality that exists only 'in the eye of the person who's looking at you', from influence, built from individual 'influence attempts' like asking a colleague to join your team. 8. She says people overuse data, arriving with a document 'this fat', when being a nice person and asking straightforwardly often works better. 9. On teamwork, she links healthy debate to psychological safety, with leaders admitting small mistakes such as a late report, and Andy adds Marshall Goldsmith's 'feed forward' idea. 10. Best also addresses women in leadership, noting contradictory advice like Penny Mordant's 'always wear black', and urges allies to watch words like 'bossy' and 'feisty', skip 'office housework', and notice interruptions.

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