Most business problems don’t stay politely in their own lane. A customer issue quickly becomes an employee morale issue, which quietly becomes a profitability issue. When one group loses, everyone carries the risk—customers, employees, and the bottom line.
Albert Einstein called the kind of thinking that helps us escape that trap combinatory play. He described it as the way our minds shuffle and recombine ideas, images, and experiences until something new appears. It’s play, but with a serious payoff: better solutions to complex problems.
Most teams never get there, because they stay locked in a single role:
- Leaders argue from the “owner” or “board” perspective.
- Employees argue from the front line.
- Customers are represented by survey data and guesswork.
What if you could get all three perspectives in the room, inside the same people, in under an hour?
The Problem With “Winning” That Isn’t
Traditional problem-solving often creates quiet losers:
- A policy that protects profit but frustrates employees.
- A process that makes life easier for the team but erodes the customer experience.
- A customer “win” that burns people out and eventually costs you both talent and money.
On paper, the change appears to be a win. In reality, you’ve just shifted the problem somewhere else in the system.
When I talk about “winning exponentially,” I mean something different: solutions that intentionally consider customers, employees, and the bottom line at the same time. Anything less might deliver a short‑term bump—but it plants seeds of longer‑term risk.
That’s where Einstein’s idea and a simple three‑chair exercise come together.
A Three‑Chair Exercise: Owner, Employee, Customer
Imagine your team gathered around three chairs, each labeled with a role:
- Chair 1: Owner/Board
- Chair 2: Employee
- Chair 3: Customer
You bring one real, specific problem into the room:
- Response times are slipping.
- First‑year turnover is rising.
- Complaints about service levels are increasing.
Then you run a short, structured exercise.
Round 1: Tell the Truth From Your Chair
Assign people to a role and have them speak only from that perspective:
- Owner/Board: “If we keep handling this issue the way we do now, what happens to profit, reputation, and scalability?”
- Employee: “What actually happens on a Tuesday afternoon when this shows up? Where do we lose time, energy, or sanity?”
- Customer: “What does this feel like from my side? What story am I telling about this experience?”
Everyone talks in the first person: “As the customer…,” “As the employee…,” “As the owner…”. You’ll hear very different versions of the same problem—and that’s the point.
Round 2: Put Solutions on the Table
Staying in their original roles, each group suggests ways to fix the problem:
- The Owner chair might push for automation or tighter standards.
- The Employee chair might ask for clearer processes or fewer conflicting priorities.
- The Customer chair may demand faster responses or greater transparency.
At this stage, it’s okay if ideas clash. You’re collecting raw material.
The Twist: Switch Chairs, Switch Loyalties (Just for fun, you may want to keep this under wraps until the first exercise is completed)
Here’s where the exercise shifts from “interesting” to transformative.
You ask everyone to move to a different chair.
The people who argued passionately as owners now become customers. The front‑line “employees” now sit in the owner or board chair. The “customers” become employees.
Their job: look at the solutions already on the board and argue “the other side.”
- As the customer now: “This policy protects margin, but here’s how it still feels like a loss to me.”
- As the employee now: “This change makes the customer happy, but here’s the hidden workload and confusion it creates.”
- As the owner now: “This idea makes employees’ lives easier, but here’s the risk to profitability or brand.”
What happens next is combinatory play in action. People start connecting dots they’ve never connected before. The conversation shifts from defending positions to reshaping solutions to better serve all three groups.
Make It Serious Work That’s Also Fun
A little humor can make this serious work more effective. When people laugh, stress drops and it becomes easier to share imperfect ideas, see new connections, and stay open to other perspectives. A lighter atmosphere also makes it safer to step into roles that might usually clash.
For example, when someone switches chairs, you might invite a quick, playful intro like, “As the world’s most impatient customer…” or “As the board member who sleeps with a spreadsheet under my pillow…”. That small moment of fun can loosen the room just enough for more honest conversation and better combined solutions.
From Trade‑Offs To Exponential Wins
By the end of a short session, you’re aiming for a different kind of outcome:
- Not “customer win, employee loss.”
- Not “employee win, profitability loss.”
- But solutions that intentionally create advantage for customers, employees, and the bottom line at once.
Examples might include:
- A new communication standard that improves customer trust, reduces employee rework, and shortens the payment cycle.
- A revised staffing approach that protects service quality, gives employees more predictable schedules, and stabilizes labor costs.
- A self‑service option that gives customers control, frees employees from repetitive tasks, and reduces support expense.
These aren’t theoretical trade‑offs. They’re exponential wins—because when all three sides gain, each win reinforces the others instead of eroding them.
Why This Matters Now
Multi‑location service organizations are under pressure from every direction: customer expectations, staffing realities, and financial demands. Furthermore, the reputation of one location can easily spread to the reputation of all locations. Leaders don’t have time for “cute” exercises that don’t move the needle.
This is not that.
A simple, one‑problem, three‑chair session can:
- Surface blind spots before they become expensive.
- Help employees think and speak like owners.
- Turn abstract “customer focus” into concrete, doable changes.
- Move the conversation from blame (“they don’t get it”) to ownership (“here’s how we all win”).
And because you can run it in under an hour, you can fold it into regular leadership meetings, manager development, or cross‑functional workshops.
If you try this, please do let me know how it goes. You may even be asked to contribute to a study (with your permission, of course). You can reach me at 954-464-6689 or irma@paronegroup.com. If you’re interested in the eight‑step problem‑solving model and expanding these ideas into everyday decisions, look for my book WINX: The Problem‑Solving Model to Win Exponentially with Customers, Employees & Your Bottom Line, available in all formats.
