Some problem-solving wisdom comes from advanced frameworks. Other wisdom comes from eighth-grade science class. Eric Harding holds onto both.
In this episode of People Solve Problems, host Jamie Flinchbaugh sits down with Eric Harding, Vice President of HR Operations and Systems at Republic Services. With more than twenty years across HR, manufacturing, and product development, Eric has seen what works, what fails, and what gets dressed up as something more sophisticated than it really is. The conversation moves through methodology, coaching, culture, and measurement, returning again and again to a single truth: the fundamentals do most of the work.
Eric describes how his thinking about problem solving traces back through Intel’s seven-step method in the early nineties, through Six Sigma belts and DMAIC, through Lean, and through more recent labels. He prefers the term methodology-based improvement because it removes the anxiety that surfaces the moment a specific brand name appears in the room. What he has noticed across organizations is that the named system matters less than the discipline of being systematic. And he is direct about where most teams fall short. Defining the problem clearly, he argues, is where the largest gains live, and it is also where most organizations are weakest.
A story from early in his career illustrates how seriously he takes context. As a Lean manager overseeing multiple factories, Eric tried the same approach in two buildings sitting across the same parking lot. It thrived in one and failed in the other. Culture matters. The situation matters. He pairs this lesson with the situational leadership framework, reading both where the organization sits in its development and where the individual being coached sits in their understanding of problem-solving.
The conversation turns to learning, where Eric makes the case for the A3 as a coaching surface that lets him see how someone thinks. He shares a moment from a strategy session with a shared service center team in Costa Rica, where nearly every problem statement returned by his teams contained the word manual. Eric now has a rule for his HR A3s. The word manual is not allowed in a problem statement because the moment it appears, the team has already decided that automation is the answer and has stopped thinking. He extends the same caution to artificial intelligence today, arguing that AI cannot rescue a process that has never been standardized in the first place.
He also recounts a recent example where a team had spent years trying to solve what they believed was a roles and responsibilities problem. Once the process flow was mapped and the right questions were asked, the actual issue surfaced. Nobody was doing the work the same way. It was a process problem all along, and only the right kind of coaching brought that to the surface.
On the subject of managing the problem landscape, Eric talks about the move from reactive firefighting to meaningful KPIs and monthly operating reviews. He shares the background check story, where loud complaints were shaping the narrative until a data analyst built the data set that showed the ninetieth percentile was on target and only the outliers were creating the noise. Data, he explains, lets you stop arguing and start solving. He encourages teams new to measurement to start somewhere, even imperfectly, and let the indicators mature over time so that operating reviews become a place for coaching and learning rather than reporting.
To learn more about Eric Harding and his work, visit http://www.republicservices.com or connect with him on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-harding-9627736.