Puzzles, Rubik's Cube and Brainteasers

By Rick Van Arnam

Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan

I grew up in the 1970’s putting together jigsaw puzzles at my grandparent’s house. Even my Great Grandmother Walrath always had a puzzle in progress with pieces scattered across a card table. As kids, my siblings and I would often get a jigsaw puzzle for Christmas. After wearing out or losing enough of the puzzle’s pieces, we would scotch tape its box corners and take it to camp where it likely remains. In the 1980’s, the Rubik’s Cube became the puzzle to own (I never solved it). By the time my kids were born in the mid-1990’s Connie and I started to buy clever travel puzzles for the kids. We actually enjoyed these puzzles more than the kids competing against one another until she consistently beat me and my anger increased to a point that I didn’t even want to kiss her goodnight!

As challenging as those puzzles were to me, I’ve been introduced to much harder puzzles on this deployment with much more at stake than a good night kiss from my wife. The Army even has a name for these puzzles – we call these Complex Problem Sets. For example, a Complex Problem Set could be anything from figuring out who really holds negative or positive sway in a province to looking at poppy eradication as a national strategy in Afghanistan. Complex Problem Sets are characterized by having several factors that cause second, third and fourth order effects. These brain-straining conundrums call out the ongoing need for deft leadership skills grounded in a selflessness that puts others first for a greater good and humility to recognize that one person alone cannot solve these issues.

Today, I sat in a meeting discussing a Complex Problem Set that required our staff to understand many things about many villages that surround us. As I looked across the room and listened to several inputs, it struck me not only how hard we are working to solve this Complex Problem Set, but also how many different areas of expertise and diversity had a chair at the table. As a reminder, I am serving in an Infantry Brigade, but you would not have guessed that by the makeup of those in the meeting or the range of topics of discussed.

In the room where I made this private observation, service members from the Army, Air Force and Navy participated (for good measure, we share a building with Marines). Joining these men and women were civilians from the Department of State, USAID (United States Agency for International Development) and the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) as well as civilian contractors who study ‘human terrain.’ The organizational diversity was matched by the diversity of individual expertise. For example, there were Army Civil Affairs’ personnel who were experts on public health and from one I learned that three factors – dirty water, upper respiratory disease and malnutrition – contribute to eighty percent of the public health issues in Afghanistan. Contributing to the challenge of the Complex Problem Set is the overarching chemistry challenge brought on by a melting pot of organizational cultures, competing priorities and individual personalities.

Trying to select one leadership skill or character trait on which success hinges is like trying to find a single solution to “solve” Afghanistan – or for that matter, figuring out how to turn around GM, fix healthcare or balance a university’s budget in the wake of plunging endowment values. From my observation, success in solving Complex Problem Sets requires a holistic and patient approach; this same attitude can be applied to leadership and character development if we want to experience similar success at solving the Complex Problem Sets that occupy our future conference rooms.

Humility, for example, is a character attribute brought into view by recognizing that a single person cannot solve these problems. It takes a room full of input just to draft a plan in order to positively impact results. One person cannot be smarter than the collective wisdom that gathers to figure out Complex Problem Sets. Big problems don’t require big egos, but instead, big humility that enables brainstorming over singularly directed answers or the will to take a new position after further thought or admitting that a third or fourth order effect had not been considered.

Working through a Complex Problems Set is not always enjoyable. But like the brainteaser we returned to as a kid, the challenge and opportunity to get something important right draws out the leadership and character in people.

RVA