Did you ever play those Penny Falls slot machines as a kid or with your kids? You know the one, you put a penny in one of the slots at the top, and then it falls on to a slidey platform thing at the bottom, bouncing off some pegs on the way down. Every now and again, a load of pennies fell of the bottom slidey thing and, if you were lucky, you got more back than you put in. I did. I’m not much of a gambler, but I liked that machine. I probably never spent more than a pound a time. Except for the once. The pile of pennies was teetering on the edge, along with a special bonus prize, and a chap was hovering. It all got pretty pensive. I was sure he was waiting for me to run out of pennies and then he would jump straight in and win the lot! I was determined to stay on, but all of my holiday money later, I was forced to give up. I walked away and didn’t dare look back. I’m sure I heard the jingling of many pennies as I left the amusement arcade. My point is this: When you put your money in at the top, you are not expecting it to come out in exactly the same place each time. You know it will bounce off those pegs and it is a game of chance; but when we are problem solving, don’t we keep sticking the pennies in the same slot and hoping it will keep coming out in the same place? I think this is what happens when problems become ‘stuck’. We repeat the same way of doing things, maybe even upping the ante and throwing even more pennies at it, until we have to walk away. Do you know what I mean? One example – and it would be great to hear yours – is communication at work. A CEO was referred to me by someone we mutually knew, who was frustrated about the number of ‘people problems’. He wanted his place to be great, somewhere where people enjoyed turning up and they could be creative and innovative. To be fair, they had achieved that in the main. I sat in on a few meetings and I could see that the problem was that people were not really connecting with each other with their messages. One person, needing some reports from another, had sent a fairly short email requesting the info. The recipient thought it was impolite, so didn’t put it at the top of their priority list. So the sender sent another. And another. Then they upped the ante, by making the tone more demanding. The recipient didn’t like them either, so the request found itself further and further down the priority list. Then the email sender invited others to the party by letting her frustration go with colleagues, demanding the line manager took action; and by not co-operating with requests made of them by the recipient. Repeating her actions and upping the ante just wasn’t working. How would you solve this problem?