CHAPTER 10

How to Choose Your Method

Choose wisely, for the true grail will bring you life; the false grail will take it from you.1

—THE GRAIL KNIGHT, IN INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE

A few rare problem-solvers have a natural intuition for solving problems and have found success with limited outside structure or guidance. When we show them a good problem-solving approach they wonder what the big deal is and just get back to work.

For the rest of us mere mortals, the right kind of structure is critical, though without the right skills and behaviors it is insufficient. I’ve mentioned a number of times throughout this book that a strong problem-solving method will help you to consistently apply the behaviors we’ve covered. This is important for both when you face your next hard problem and when you’re developing your skills on more moderate problems.

A strong method helps you in a few ways. First, it helps you apply the right behaviors while solving problems. Second, it gives you a consistent way to practice to improve more quickly. Third, it gives a common language and structure by which you can coach and be coached. Fourth, it helps you to redirect yourself when you get stuck, or backtrack when you have made a mistake. Finally, it helps you to tell your story in a logical way as you develop buy-in for your solution.

CRITERIA FOR PICKING YOUR METHOD

I don’t intend to tell you what should be the right problem-solving method for you. There are so many that it would be a bit silly for me to dig through all of them to give each one an individual assessment. Furthermore, different problem-solvers may just prefer some method over others because it fits their style. All of this is fine, as long as the method meets certain criteria that I discuss below. In the end as you hone your skills you will become less reliant on any one approach and will be able to adapt to the method that the other people around you are using. But as a great problem-solver, you’ll need to insist on fiercely utilizing the behaviors you have worked so hard to ingrain.

Here is some guidance on what to look out for if you want to be able to solve hard problems.

First and foremost, make sure the method you’re choosing does not encourage guessing during its root cause analysis phase. Almost all of them do, so this should eliminate most of your options right away. Unfortunately, most methods disguise the guessing stage in some fancy language, such as “determine possible root causes.” This is making a list of guesses, and at this point I hope you would read such an instruction and declare, “How the heck am I meant to do that?” Even coming up with a “hypothesis” is a guess, despite it being a scientific term. If at any point in a method you are asked to make a list, “come up with” something, or hypothesize, then avoid such a method for the junk that it is.

Second, look for a method that starts by focusing on the problem. This will guide you to spend time getting close to the actual problem, understand what’s really going on, and establish a pattern of failure. Some methods devote a few lines to this, and others many pages. Neither is strictly better than the other, and I’ve seen many methods that do this well. If you are primarily focused on developing your capability then you can quickly figure out how much guidance helps you. When choosing a method for a broader group, you need to strike a balance between keeping high-potential people engaged and not leaving beginning problem-solvers behind. If you want to solve hard problems, I suggest biasing towards the needs of the high-potential problem-solvers, and make sure you bring the others along as needed.

Watch out for methods that mostly focus on picking the right team members, getting buy-in, and so on. This is useful for political problems, especially ones that are zero-sum game in nature and where there is little agreement on the actual goal. However, this focus is not a core differentiator for solving hard process problems where there can often be fact-based alignment on the strategic goal. Similarly, endless focus on validating your solution typically implies a weakness with the method when actually identifying the true root cause.

In the end, ask yourself whether the problem-solving method you’re looking at is designed to encourage you to effectively use all of the problem-solving behaviors that you’ve learned. Pick a good one, practice with it, use it to tell your problem-solving story, and you’ll invariably develop and grow as a problem-solver. How do you know you have made the right choice? Measure progress in how you are developing your problem-solving skills, and most importantly, in the number of elegant solutions you successfully implement.

Keep in mind that the method you choose to guide you is of little use without strong problem-solving behaviors. Some methods will do more or less to guide you in applying some of the behaviors at the appropriate times, but most problem-solving behaviors should be applied throughout the entire journey (see Table 10.1). Just as the knife does not make the chef, neither will the method make you a great problem-solver. Practice by using one, but do not solely rely on it for your success.

MANY METHODS ENCOURAGE GUESSING

In my own experience I have found that most problem-solving methods promote guessing at some point in the process, but that it is snuck in under disguise.

There are some typical broad steps to these problem-solving methods, whether or not they are good:

• Identify the problem and its pattern of failure

• Seek causes

• Implement the solution

Don’t be lulled into a sense of security just because you have a structure that follows these high-level steps. At some point the vast majority devolve into guessing. Why is this? My best understanding is that there are two reasons: First, most people writing problem-solving books are so accustomed to guessing that it feels natural. But second, many problem-solving methods are designed to help people solve easy problems. You need motivated people willing to develop their skills in order to effectively use a problem-solving method that does not involve any guessing.

For easier problems, finding a pattern and then guessing is often enough to get by—you may be lucky and already have the data you need, or be able to easily guess where to measure and the pattern can yield the cause. But whenever you read a method step such as “determine possible root causes,” this is a red flag for your problem-solving method. How are you meant to determine such a list? Pluck it out of thin air, or potentially worse, wait for someone else to do it?

Table 10.1: The categories of problem-solving methods

Which Kind of Problem-Solving Method Are You Using?

Structured guessing. These very simple methods provide a bit of organizational structure to guessing, such as:

• Categorization (Fishbone Diagrams)

• Persistence (such as Five Whys)

• Collaboration (various forms of brainstorming)

They can accelerate progress in solving some easier problems.

Pattern of failure. These methods use more structure to help problem-solvers establish a strong problem description and pattern of failure. Typically, they include:

• A step-by-step series of questions to answer

• A step of determining with intuition some potential root causes to the problem

• Helping to improve the quality of guesses

• Preventing a problem-solver from guessing particularly unlikely potential root causes

These methods are helpful for moderate problems.

First principles. These methods may also contain structure that helps problem-solvers establish a strong problem description and pattern of failure. Their distinct features include:

• Pointing a problem-solver towards analyzing the controlling variables of the problem as black boxes (or independent elements)

• Iterating until a directly modifiable out-of-control element is identified as the root cause

VARIABLE ANALYSIS

Most problem-solving methods are not up to scratch and will not allow you to solve hard problems. The good news is there are several methods that will do the job. I will not list all of these, nor categorize others, as there are far too many to be comprehensive. Table 10.2 is a very brief description of Variable Analysis, which I use.

As you’ll see, it’s pretty light on instruction, and this is particularly true compared to some methods that are common in business today. One of the reasons I like it is that it is clearly a guide meant to encourage you to use the right behaviors, rather than something that implies that close adherence to very specific direction will get you there without thinking.2

Table 10.2: Variable Analysis

1. Define the problem.

a. What problem are you trying to solve?

b. Determine the primary variable

• Closely inspect the point of failure or failed output

• What measurable property do you want to change?

• Is it possible to define the problem using a more specific variable?

2. Describe the problem: describe the problem in detail.

a. What does the problem look like?

b. When did the problem start?

c. How often does the problem occur?

d. Where does the problem first occur?

e. When where don’t you see the problem?

3. Create a variable tree: develop each layer of sub-variables by understanding how the process works

a. How is the process designed to control the primary variable?

b. What else determines the value of the primary variable?

c. Can we combine any of the sub-variables?

4. Eliminate sub-variables from the tree

a. What should the value of each sub-variable be to prevent the problem from occurring?

• What is the relationship between each sub-variable and the primary variable?

b. Eliminate sub-variables that do not contribute to the problem

• What is the actual value of the sub-variable during failure? During non-failure?

• What tests could you use to eliminate variables that are difficult to measure?

• What does the pattern of failure tell you?

c. Expand sub-variables that have not been eliminated (iterating step 3)

d. Start with sub-variables that the pattern-of-failure suggests are most likely to contribute to the problem

e. Continue to expand and eliminate sub-variables until you have found the out-of-spec variable(s) that are directly in your control

• Can you explain exactly how the out-of-spec sub-variable(s) contribute(s) directly to the problem?

f. If you get stuck . . .

• Have you eliminated a sub-variable that you should not have?

• Have you missed a sub-variable?

5. Implement the solution

a. Implement the solution

b. Verify the solution

I like this method for a number of reasons. First, variable analysis helps you remember to start by defining the problem well and getting to know the problem in detail, without consideration of what the potential solutions might be. Second, it guides you to only learn about the parts of the system that are out of spec and thus saves lots of time by ignoring the 90% to 95% of it that you never need to learn about in order to solve the problem. It does this by allowing you to rapidly discover which high-level variables are in control, so you can focus your attention elsewhere. Finally, it doesn’t devote large attention to “ensuring the solution is sustainable,” and so on, because if you have a clearly understood root cause, this is a relatively trivial step.

Even for great problem-solvers, structure is helpful as a pillar to lean on whenever you start to get off-course. It helps you refocus when you get stuck. Too much structure, though, becomes a rote checklist and disengages the brain, leaving no room for thinking or developing insight. Your structure should be your guide, rather than your recipe or puppet master.

NOW: CHOOSE YOUR METHOD

If you have a method that you currently use, decide now whether it’s robust enough to help you solve hard problems. If it is, wonderful! Keep going and practice those behaviors. If the method you use isn’t strong enough, or you don’t have a method at all, do a bit of research to find a method you like. Perhaps ask around with your friends to see what they find useful, and evaluate that.

..................Content has been hidden....................

You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.
Reset
3.128.203.137