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Creative Problem Solving: What My Plumber Taught Me About Business Innovation

Three months ago, I watched my plumber fix what three other tradies couldn't solve in six weeks.

The problem? Water was mysteriously appearing in my Brisbane office basement every Tuesday morning. Not a flood, just enough to ruin carpet and create that lovely mouldy smell that makes clients think twice about doing business with you. The first plumber blamed the pipes. The second blamed the foundation. The third suggested I move offices entirely.

Then Gary showed up.

Gary didn't even bring his toolbox inside initially. Instead, he spent twenty minutes walking around the building exterior, looking up at the gutters, checking the car park drainage, even chatting to the bloke next door about his sprinkler system. Turns out the mystery water came from an incorrectly angled downpipe that only created problems when combined with the neighbour's Monday night lawn watering and specific wind conditions.

Total cost: $127 and forty-five minutes of actual work.

This is exactly what's missing in most corporate creative problem solving approaches today. We've become obsessed with sophisticated frameworks and expensive consultants when sometimes the best solutions come from stepping back and looking at the whole picture differently.

The Real Problem with Problem Solving Training

Most business problem solving training I've encountered over the past sixteen years falls into the same trap. They teach you the Six Sigma approach, or the Design Thinking methodology, or whatever Harvard Business Review is pushing this quarter. Don't get me wrong – these frameworks have their place. But they often create more bureaucracy than breakthrough thinking.

I've sat through countless workshops where teams spend three hours defining the problem statement and another two hours creating affinity maps, only to arrive at solutions any competent person could have suggested in the first ten minutes. It's process theatre, not actual problem solving.

The construction industry gets this right more often than corporate Australia does. When a builder encounters an unexpected obstacle – say, finding asbestos where the plans show clear space – they don't schedule a workshop to brainstorm solutions. They stop, assess, and find the most practical path forward. Fast.

Why Tradies Are Better Problem Solvers Than Most Managers

Here's an unpopular opinion: your average electrician or mechanic demonstrates better creative problem solving skills daily than most middle managers do in a month.

They're forced to work with constraints – limited tools, awkward spaces, tight budgets, and impatient customers. They can't solve problems by throwing money at them or creating new departments. They have to actually fix things.

More importantly, they're not afraid to admit when they don't know something. I've never met a tradesperson who wouldn't pick up the phone and ask a colleague for advice when stumped. Meanwhile, I've watched executives struggle for weeks with obvious problems because asking for help might make them look incompetent.

The best problem solvers I know – regardless of industry – share three characteristics that most business training programs completely ignore:

They're comfortable with ambiguity. They don't need complete information before starting to work on a solution.

They're willing to experiment with small, reversible changes rather than waiting for the perfect comprehensive plan.

They actually listen to people who deal with the problem daily, especially the ones everyone else dismisses as "just complainers."

The Innovation Theatre Problem

Australian businesses love talking about innovation. We have innovation labs, innovation managers, and innovation KPIs. We run hackathons and design sprints and bring in expensive speakers to tell us about Silicon Valley success stories.

Yet somehow, we still struggle with basic problems that have been obvious for years.

I know a retail chain that spent $200,000 on an innovation consulting project to improve customer experience while their sales staff had been telling management for eighteen months that the checkout process was too slow and complicated. The innovation consultants eventually recommended... simplifying the checkout process.

This happens because we've confused innovation with novelty. We assume creative solutions must be complex, technological, or revolutionary. Sometimes the most innovative thing you can do is eliminate unnecessary steps, ask better questions, or actually implement the obvious solution everyone's been avoiding.

What Actually Works (From Someone Who's Seen It All)

After running problem solving workshops across Australia and New Zealand for the better part of two decades, I've noticed the same patterns in organisations that consistently generate practical, creative solutions.

First, they separate problem identification from solution generation. Most teams jumble these together and end up solving the wrong problem brilliantly. The best organisations I work with spend 60% of their time making sure they understand what they're actually trying to fix.

Second, they include people from outside the immediate problem area. Not because fresh eyes automatically see better solutions, but because people without investment in the current system ask different questions. The finance person might notice something the operations team missed, not because they're smarter, but because they care about different metrics.

Third, they prototype fast and cheap. Instead of debating whether an idea will work, they test it on a small scale. Most business problems aren't life-or-death situations. You can afford to try something for a week and see what happens.

And here's the thing most training programs won't tell you: creative problem solving isn't actually about creativity. It's about discipline.

The Discipline Behind Creative Solutions

Real creative problem solving requires the discipline to:

Question assumptions everyone takes for granted
Research what's already been tried (and why it failed)
Talk to people affected by the problem, not just people responsible for solving it
Test solutions before committing resources
Accept that your first idea probably isn't your best idea

The creativity comes from combining existing knowledge in new ways, not from generating completely original ideas out of thin air.

Gary the plumber didn't invent a revolutionary new approach to mystery water problems. He just applied standard diagnostic principles more systematically than the other tradies. He looked at timing patterns, environmental factors, and interconnected systems instead of assuming the problem must be in the most obvious place.

This systematic approach works just as well for business problems. Whether you're trying to reduce customer complaints, improve team productivity, or figure out why your marketing campaigns aren't converting, the same principles apply.

Start with the whole system, not just the broken part. Look for patterns and timing. Question your assumptions about cause and effect. Test small changes before implementing big ones.

Why Most Creative Problem Solving Training Misses the Mark

The problem with most corporate training in this area is that it treats creative problem solving as a special skill requiring special techniques. It's not. It's a combination of curiosity, patience, and willingness to look foolish while you figure things out.

You don't need fancy workshops or expensive facilitators. You need permission to spend time understanding problems properly and the authority to test solutions without layers of approval.

I've seen teams solve complex operational problems using nothing more than whiteboards, sticky notes, and the freedom to actually try their ideas. I've also seen teams equipped with every problem-solving tool imaginable fail to address simple issues because they were too focused on following the process correctly.

The real barrier isn't knowledge or tools. It's organisational culture that punishes curiosity and rewards compliance with existing procedures.

The Bottom Line

Creative problem solving isn't rocket science. It's plumbing.

It requires patience, the right tools, and willingness to get your hands dirty investigating problems most people would rather ignore. It means asking uncomfortable questions and challenging popular assumptions. It means accepting that elegant solutions often look obvious in retrospect.

Most importantly, it means recognising that the person closest to the problem often knows more about solving it than the person highest in the organisation chart.

Next time you're facing a persistent business problem, try thinking like Gary the plumber. Walk around the whole situation. Ask basic questions. Talk to people who deal with the problem daily. Test simple solutions before designing complex ones.

You might be surprised how often the expensive consultants and sophisticated frameworks aren't necessary.

Sometimes you just need to check if someone's watering their lawn at the wrong time.

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