Like many leaders today you may be struggling with how to: Recruit younger workers – millennials or Gen-Zs? Get the most out of aging boomers before they retire? Retain promising mid-career employees looking for their next promotion? Solutions to these workforce challenges requires a creative mindset to develop innovative approaches that work in the context of your business. Here are three keys for finding short and long-term solutions to your most vexing talent problems.

1. Treat workforce challenges as an “adaptive” problem

Leadership guru Ron Heifetz differentiates between “technical” and “adaptive” problems. You should, too. Technical problems imply the solution you need to recruit more engineers or IT staff, for example, exists out there somewhere in a formula that can be readily applied. But, recruiting, developing and retaining skilled talent is not a structured problem where everyone else but you has the answers. These are “adaptive” – or “wicked” – problems that don’t have clear answers.

Characteristics of adaptive problems:

• You can’t see the end result of the solution. The truth is you don’t know what your workforce is going to look like 5-7 years from now, no matter what programs you implement.
• Building an effective future workforce will require multiple experiments and trial and error initiatives.
• Learning from these innovations will help create new behaviors and values around staffing and talent management.
• Unfortunately, employees and managers in your company expect leaders to know what to do in situations like this.

The take away here is don’t beat yourself up because you can’t figure out how to recruit and retain high performing young staffers. Instead, recognize the difficulty of these specific talent problems and start trying things that could make a difference.

2. Ask different questions to get at more innovative solutions.

As the business environment becomes more complex, you need to ask new questions to get more creative answers to the talent challenges you’re facing. In my research, I find too many executives keep asking:

• How do we make our industry “sexier” and more attractive to job candidates? Why can’t we be more like Google, Pixar, or the Netflix?
• How do we do a better job retaining talent?
• Why can’t we find millennials with the same work ethic their parents had?

Instead, in their book Simple Habits for Complex Times authors Berger and Johnston argue that leaders should be asking questions that focus more on possibilities than solutions. For example:

• What if critical skill shortages were an opportunity to do something radically different with our workforce?
• How can we reinvent our talent management practices to succeed in the new environment?
• What are different ways new technologies might be applied to resolve ongoing talent shortages?

According to Berger and Johnston, learning how to ask new, frame breaking questions is relatively easy. It’s getting in the habit of asking them and really engaging with them that’s the hard part. Try it!

3. Collaborate with other employers to build a talent pool.

More and more companies are increasing their leverage with schools and other talent providers by banding together to communicate their talent needs more clearly to those running educational programs. Small to midsize companies often don’t hire enough new engineers, CNC machinists, or cyber security specialists to convince nearby colleges or high schools to invest more in these programs.

But multi-employer collaboratives can be a great way for companies to define their critical skill needs more explicitly. These groups can then negotiate with talent providers to redesign training programs that better meet employers’ needs. I’ve been working with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation on a program that trains local chambers and workforce development leaders in managing these collaboratives effectively.

Today, industry-specific initiatives are focusing on important local workforce needs in a variety of states and cities. For example, evolving collaboratives include:

• Kentucky, manufacturing and healthcare
• Houston, Upskill Houston – including construction, energy industries
• San Diego, data scientists
• Phoenix, cybersecurity professionals
• Michigan  – electric & gas line workers

The challenges of finding and retaining access to skilled talent in the changing labor pool are long term problems that every manager must endure and overcome. Recognize that these are complex adaptive (not simple, technical) problems and ask new questions in addressing them. In addition, look for opportunities to collaborate with others in finding solutions. These three strategies will give you a competitive advantage in building a more productive future workforce.