Using TSI to Help Solve Beyond the “Technical” Problem

By Monica Price, Impact Innovator

Monica Price

In elementary school, I was known as the neighborhood engineer and architect of many “what will we do today?” projects. We built elaborate tube mazes for gerbils, play sets for backyard performances, and a mobile hangout space atop a red wagon so that we could easily transfer the play date to any of our houses. 

I’ve always been driven by a desire to design and solve problems. I chose tech to start my career for the plethora of problem-solving opportunities. And most of those were technical problems, which may be complicated but generally have a clear answer. This served my hankering, but during my first real foray into leadership, while managing a team, I ran into a stumbling block when an adaptive challenge arose, and I realized I needed a new way of doing things. 

Solving for Technical Problems and Adaptive Challenge 

Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky, in their Harvard Business Review article Survival Guide for Leaders, describe technical problems as “often challenging, and can be solved by applying existing know-how and the organization’s current problem-solving processes.” The article goes on to say that adaptive challenges “resist these kinds of solutions because they require individuals throughout the organization to alter their ways; as the people themselves are the problem, the solution lies with them.” 

The challenge I was facing was with two leads bound in conflict. One was more senior than me, and I was terrified by the prospect of making things worse. Yet, there was something inside of me that was exhilarated by the opportunity to make things better, because I knew working through this challenge would help us do our jobs better and create more desirable outcomes. I’d like to say that I handled the situation well, but the truth is we muddled our way through. But that situation ignited in me a passion; a passion to better understand and help solve what I would later come to call adaptive challenges. 

Shifting Focus to Systems and Frameworks: Design Thinking, Adaptive Leadership, AI, Systems Thinking 

My process for solving problems has been evolving ever since my childhood neighborhood endeavors. When I was in tech, armed with software engineering skills, my process was somewhat organic: it involved some trial, some error, but mostly applying existing know-how and staying within the lines of the “technical problem.” As I shifted my career to focus on more nebulous, adaptive challenges I needed to acquire new capabilities. I discovered frameworks like Design Thinking, Adaptive Leadership, Appreciative Inquiry, and Systems Thinking, all of which have proven immensely helpful along my journey. In my consulting work over the last 10 years, I’ve focused on systems and used these frameworks in their truest form and also more organically as I borrowed and stole bits and pieces to form my own tool box. It is from this place that I joined NewImpact to re-imagine business and systems challenges using the Tri-sector Innovation (TSI) mindset.  

TSI in Action: Improving Veteran Career Outcomes through Tri-Sector Innovation 

Earlier this year I worked on a project for the United Service Organizations (USO), the nation’s leading charitable organization serving active-duty military. We were looking to help improve outcomes for young veterans coming out of the military. This problem proved to be both a technical problem — architecting a database to track ecosystem outcomes — and also an adaptive challenge in finding ways to construct ecosystem governance that could (a) increase trust between service provider organizations, (b) reduce competition between providers, and (c) find sustainable revenue for the ecosystem to continue doing their great work.  

We used Tri-Sector Innovation to identify and incorporate resources from the nonprofit, for-profit, and government sectors. We also explored ways to bring needed funding from not just the social sector which is the current model, but to incorporate the self-interest of the government and for-profit organizations to augment the needed support.  

Visualizing Impact and Progress in Times of Uncertainty 

The urgency to re-imagine systems of inequity, stewardship of the environment, and business’ role in making a desirable future is ever more apparent. It’s a bit of a cliche to say, but it’s not easy to absorb that the world is changing ever faster. It is even harder to visualize progress under such uncertainty. At NewImpact, I had the pleasure to work with a top-notch team of generative thinkers and innovation bad asses. While reflecting on the capacities which I gained during my time at NewImpact, my biggest takeaway has been how the Tri-Sector mindset has become part of my tool box. How might we bring resources from different sectors to help find new and creative ways to support and solve the challenges of our time. Imagination, curiosity, and attention are endless resources that all organizations have. How might we use them to solve the challenges we face with hope in an uncertain future?