In search of the elegant solution.
Some years ago, a fashionable boutique hotel on Manhattan’s Upper East Side was having a serious problem. Guest complaints were on the rise, and most of them centered on one particular aspect of the hotel: its elevator. In a word, it was too slow. Guests could swear they felt themselves aging as they waited for what seemed like eternity for the elevator to show up. Some became so discouraged, they reluctantly gave up staying at the quaint hotel.
Hotel management knew it had to do something. Experts were consulted–engineers, architects, contractors. These experts were universal in their recommendation: add a second elevator. This undertaking was not going to be cheap—it was anticipated to cost around $1 million as well as cost the hotel the permanent use of five guest rooms to accommodate the infrastructure of the new elevator. And it wasn’t going to be quick—construction was estimated to take upward of four months.
Management felt as though it had no choice. It needed to address the concerns of its clientele, even if it meant absorbing this huge expense and subjecting guests to the inconvenience of hotel construction. A few weeks before work was scheduled to begin, the hotel manager confided his dilemma to a long-time guest who happened to be an inventor. After the manager finished his story, the guest, who was quite familiar with the hotel and its clientele, said he could solve the hotel’s problem for $1,000. And in addition, he could have the work completed in less than one week.
The manager knew this man well, and trusted him. Yet he could not understand how he would be able to install a new elevator in one week for just $1,000. But he figured, what did he have to lose? If it didn’t work out, there was always the million dollar solution in the wings. He agreed to the man’s proposition and they shook hands.
One week later to the day, the manager walked in to the lobby and was amazed by what he saw. Instead of a new elevator, the inventor had installed a huge floor-to-ceiling mirror adjacent to the elevator. Almost immediately, guest complaints of the elevator died down.
What the inventor/guest understood was that the problem wasn’t that people were waiting too long. It was that they had nothing to do while they waited. By installing the mirror, guests could preen themselves or observe the rest of the lobby area while they waited for the elevator.
This is what is universally known as an “elegant solution.” An elegant solution is one in which the maximum desired effect is achieved with the smallest or simplest effort.
Often, what we think of as the “problem” isn’t the real problem at all. It is really just a symptom. The problem in this instance wasn’t that “It’s taking too long to get to my room” or “I’m waiting too long in the lobby.” It’s that “I’m bored.”
The behavioral psychologist Abraham Maslow once famously stated, “If all you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail.” His point is that by relying on “experts” to always solve problems, the solutions are all going to look pretty much the same, growing from what the experts know best. Often the most elegant solutions come not from experts, but from creative “generalists”—thinkers who are adept at understanding the true nature of the problem and are willing to entertain or design a wide range of possible solutions.
So next time you find yourself in a situation where you feel it will take an “expert” to design a workable solution, consider also talking to a few generalists and see what they come back with. They might just blow you away.
Posted by Mickey
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