Problem - Screwing Up

I was reading a book on Problem Solving:

Quotes from the book (without permission):

A very interesting quote: "Note that usually people talk about a solution when addressing a problem. Cognitively, both problem and solution appear to be coupled in people’s thoughts. The resulting behaviour is usually as follows: talking about the problem-solution issue in terms of encumbrances experienced e.g., ‘it takes me two hours each day to get to the office’, and what should be done about it e.g., ‘When are they going to add an extra lane to the highway?’. When this person gets into a group he might mention his unhappiness by complaining about the hours lost in traffic jams every day and that it is obvious that an extra lane has to be built. Colleagues living in the same area might agree, as they also sit in traffic jams. on the other hand, citizens living near the proposed expanded-highway might fear serious hindrance from construction works and an increase in noise, emissions and pollution due to the increased traffic density. The citizens disagreeing with the proposed construction of an extra lane will simply tell our commuter to wake up a little earlier in order to reach the office before rush hour starts.on a regional level, other people could disagree with the extra lane since they might prefer recreational space to highways. They would advise our commuter to use public transport. In addition, the regional government might want to spend money on other issues rather than highways since they might have committed themselves to improving the telecommunication grid during the election campaign. Similarly, as public health is also an issue high up their political agenda, they might try to motivate people to use their bicycles to travel to work (and take the bus when it rains).Clearly, all these people disagree with our commuter’s proposed ‘solution’, but, in the same way as the commuter, they also announce what, according to them, the ‘solution’ should be. bringing these people together will lead to lengthy discussions, each announcing and defending their own ‘solution’, trying to convince others, looking for people who support their vision (commonly known as ‘coalition forming’). This will delay decision-making, and might suppress alternatives that could be a good solution for the majority of people.in short, there are two different issues at hand: (1) the cognitive action of thinking directly about a solution for the problem rather than in terms of what the real problem is. This easily leads to (2) to announce and defend behaviour when in a group, giving rise to group dynamic processes of discussion, coalition forming and ultimately no decision-making"