If I were speaking as a manager, I would have already done something about the issue.

But no, I'm talking about people that I have worked with, but not managed.

And these aren't 'dysfunctional' teams by any objective measure. These teams were formed from reasonably competent individuals, typically turned in their work on time, and had comfortable social dynamics.

Yet on the rare occasion that a problem cropped up.... ah we didn't always take the best approach to problem solving.

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There's a story I heard about firefighters. They did a study on veterans to find out how people operated under pressure. The researchers thought in the face of a burning building, surely the fire-fighters wouldn't be able to do an in depth search of all possible solutions, so they'd just compare the top-two that they thought of.

Seems reasonable.

In reality, the they just went with the very first solution that they didn't imagine had fatal errors.

That's how people are... under pressure, we go with the first thing that might possibly work, not the best thing. That's why we need to think about problem solving techniques, before problems actually occur.