Leadership Bites Issue No. 3: Promote Continuous Improvement

The well they almost gave up on

One Idea. Every Month.
A monthly note on leadership for frontline supervisors — one focused idea, grounded in human behavior, applied to the work we do.

By early 1938, Dammam No. 7 had been a money pit for over a year — accident after accident, delay after delay. Management in San Francisco had reportedly decided to pull the plug on the whole Saudi venture. What turned a failing well into the discovery this entire company is built on wasn't new equipment. It was how two men defined the problem.

The core idea

When a problem resists us, the instinct is to work harder on the answer we already have. Steineke did the opposite — he argued the problem wasn't that there was no oil, but that they hadn't drilled deep enough to reach the porous limestone beneath. Meanwhile Khamis bin Rimthan read the same desert everyone else saw and found paths no map showed. Instruments and instinct, pointed at the right question.

Behavioral science calls our trap “functional fixedness” — we get locked into one framing. The best problem-solvers don't push harder first. They step back and ask whether they're even solving the right problem. Solving problems really is in our blood — but only because someone refused to accept the obvious diagnosis.

In practice

1. Before jumping to solutions, restate the problem three different ways. The framing that unlocks it is rarely the first one.
2. Pair the instruments with the instinct. Your data tells you what's measurable; your most experienced hands often sense what isn't. Steineke needed Rimthan. Get both in the room.
3. Separate “this approach failed” from “this is impossible.” Dammam No. 7 hit oil at 4,720 feet — just below where lesser persistence would have stopped.

This week

Take one problem your team has been grinding on and ask: “are we sure we've defined this correctly — or are we just drilling the same hole harder?”