We had a little ‘incident’ in the office this week.  It really started a few weeks ago when we got a super cool automatic espresso coffee maker.  It’s the kind that you just walk up to it and select the shot size, press a button and voila out comes wonderful coffee.  This all worked very well until someone put ground coffee instead of whole coffee beans into the bean container.  The machine clogged up and was ‘rendered inoperable’ as they say. No one came forward and claimed responsibility (probably a smart move if you consider the state my coworkers were in, what with the lack of coffee and all).

So, I had a couple of problems: first where to get some coffee (it’s like a 10 minute walk to the nearest Starbucks), and second how to figure out who did this and why they didn’t take responsibility (the third problem, how to fix the machine was thankfully solved since then, as one of us is a former coffee barista and she fixed the darned thing).

And then I remembered something about framing.  Not people, but problems.  And if the problem is to get people to do something they don’t want to, it’s the Tom Sawyer version of a framing problem.  Normally, when you want to learn something you ask.  So, I could go around asking people if they had put regular grounds into the espresso maker, and broken it.  This would make everyone rather upset that I was accusing them of a) not knowing what they were doing, and b) not owning up to it.

So, I could easily frame this in a way that the only person who would feel upset, was the person who actually broke the machine.  You see, it’s just about how I ask the question.  If I asked everyone who had opportunity a simple question: “I just wanted to ask everyone to confirm that they didn’t break the coffee machine.  Please respond by saying: I did not.”

Now the smart ones reading this will say that the culprit either a) will not answer, or b) simply lie.  Let’s explore that.  If you don’t answer, then I’ll remind you to answer.  Those who have nothing to hide will ultimately answer. Those who have something to hide will be reluctant to, but if only one person remains then I know who to confront.   Now, the lying scenario is if everyone says they didn’t do it, then I know that someone didn’t just ‘forget’ to tell about it, but actually and actively lied about it.  I won’t like that, but I will have learned something very important: a dishonest person is working for me, and probably a stupid one too.  Because if I put energy into it, I can probably figure out roughly when the machine broke, and thus narrow my list.

But, in the end, the framing exercise makes it a lot more likely that I’ll get the result that I want.  But logically the two approaches are equivalent. One is just a more effective way to elicit information from humans–even if the information gained is the same.

Of course, there is a third way of framing the problem: blogging about it, and letting everyone in the office know, and hoping the poor sop comes forward.