Leading a group from “here” to “there” presupposes more than one right answer. Facilitation strives to articulate the best answer for each group of participants, eschewing the thought that some universal “best answer” exists.
When preparing for problem solving or gap analysis, the meeting designer alone bears a tremendous burden to design optimal meeting activities that will kindle consensus. No one can prove certainty about the future, so I’ll also recommend building different scenarios and ranges of possibilities. Therefore, creative thinking remains paramount for exceptional problem solving or gap analysis. Facilitators may be more challenged than ever, but this chapter will make it easier for you, especially once you learn how to manage “many-to-many.”
This Problem-Solving Approach solves problems by creating focus when there are many symptoms, many causes, many preventions, and many cures that ought to be considered. This Problem-Solving Approach also keeps participants, especially those who jump around, on track.
Many meetings waste time because they lack structure, not because they fail to generate some promising ideas. Meetings are challenged by people who never know when they are done, how they can measure their progress, and how much work remains to be done. They don’t know what they missed. They don’t know what they don’t know. This disciplined Problem-Solving Approach helps you to structure activities and ask precise questions that will unveil practical and obscure solutions.
Early emphasis should not be on trying to solve the problem but instead on finding unusual ways of looking at and describing the problem situation. The more general the expression of a problem, the less likely it is to suggest answers. As the problem definition becomes more specific, it sharpens potential solutions.
NOTE: Problem definition is far more critical than most people understand. For example, while traveling on a deserted road, an automobile gets a flat tire. The occupants discover that there is no jack in the trunk. They define the problem as “finding a jack” and decide to walk to a station for a jack. Another automobile on the same road also blows a tire. The occupants of the second car also discover that there is no jack. They define the problem as “raising the automobile.” They see an old barn, push the auto there, raise it on a pulley, change the tire, and drive off while the occupants of the first car are still trudging toward the service station.1
While J. W. Getzels, who came up with this example, does not mention a third option, another group might push the vehicle to the side of the road and, using their hands, rocks, sticks, or different implements, dig a hole around the bad tire. The problem statement might more accurately reflect the need for “clear access to the axle and surrounding area,” rather than lifting the vehicle. Depending on the cause of the flat, there may be more problem definitions as well.
To create divergent solutions, vary the descriptions of the problem. When focused on describing the problem, using mountaineering as an analogy, you might consider the following:
First, consider rewriting or versioning problem statements:2
Second, consider changing Perspectives (chapter 8), which stimulates other worthwhile aspects that further help detail and describe the problem. Mountaineers might embrace perspectives from their climbers, Sherpas, legal authority, nearby residents, other climbers, and so on.
Adapt the Problem-Solving Approach for your situation. This chapter explains the prototype for solving problems and analyzing gaps that gets us from where we are now to where we want to be in the future. I’ll use an example suggesting that an organization has determined that a problem of “burnout” permeates the Cybersecurity Department. We will use the Problem-Solving Approach to draft creative and practical solutions.
A solution of proposed actions to prevent, mitigate, and cure the causes of “burnout” within the Cybersecurity Department.
Follow the seven-activity sequence fully explained in chapter 5.
Here is a brief exercise that illustrates the difficulty of managing information in our heads (that is, without external aids or other people).
Picture an apple in your “mind’s eye.” Can you do that? Can you picture 2 apples in your mind? Three? Clearly picture 3 apples in your mind. How about 4 . . . 5 . . . 6 . . . 10? Few people will claim they can hold the images of 10 or more apples at once.
Humans have cognitive limitations and limited information-processing capacity. Apples are basic objects. We can “hold” several of them in our mind at once. But increase the number, or increase their complexity (make that 1 large, red Macintosh apple; 3 smallish green Granny Smiths; 4 average-sized Fijis; and so on) and it becomes more difficult to hold a picture. In a group setting, each person might be picturing a different variety or size of apple and not be aware that his or her vision is entirely different from others’. When individuals and groups confront a complex decision, they may talk in circles without keeping track of all the details and relevant information, beyond what they can see in their mind’s eye.
Therefore, my Problem-Solving Approach respects the fact that all of us can recall, remember, and visualize more possibilities as a team than as individuals. Participants with specialized expertise also increase the likelihood that more accurate cause-effect relationships may be identified. Collaboratively, we are much more powerful, and that’s why nobody is smarter than everybody.
Use Breakout Teams (chapter 6) and the Creativity Tool (next section) to illustrate the ideal state for the Cybersecurity Department, devoid of any “burn-out.” It might be faster and potentially more effective to build a narrative expression using the Purpose Tool (chapter 7).
If you use any illustrative tool, you develop some good “eye candy” for posting throughout the session. Plan to use the logic of Categorizing (chapter 6) and Bookend Rhetoric (chapter 7) when you convert any illustrations into narrative expressions. Either way, narrative or illustrative, be prepared to use the Definition Tool (chapter 6) to socialize understanding about terms or phrases used by the participants.
NOTE: By confirming the purpose of the future state or the ideal condition, we are describing the way things ought to be when there is no problem, when everything is working according to design.
Use the Creativity Tool during the ideation or Listing activity of Brainstorming (chapter 6). Requiring participants to illustrate their answers enables them to express complex ideas more easily, even when they prefer to do it narratively. The Creativity Tool is especially beneficial for developing visions of the business or organization; use when defining terms or solutions, especially intangible products and services.
Figure 8.1. Creativity Tool Example
Creativity allows each team to draw many illustrative answers to one specific question or provide many solutions for one specific scenario (figure 8.1). For complex topics, Creativity frequently takes less time than getting participants to write down narrative descriptions.
When you use Creativity early during your session, mount participants’ output as wallpaper and they will refer to it during the session. Since teams, not individuals, create the output, you provide timid participants with permission to speak freely by enabling them to speak about what their team created.
NOTE: You can use one or more of the prompts listed here or use your own. If you have the teams draw pictures of both today and the future, you empower them with the ability to compare and contrast.
I would use the Definition Tool (chapter 6). There are other right answers. However, make sure you know what your deliverable looks like. To me, it looks like five responses for prompts from the Definition Tool:
NOTE: Fully define the problem state or condition, building consensus around the way things are at present. This Agenda Step could be inserted ahead of the “ideal state.” Do what feels natural to you.
I prefer to describe a “solution,” then agree on the problem, and use the remaining time to get us from here (problem) to there (solution). Some argue that cybersecurity personnel might be bitching and moaning when the session begins, so let them get it off their chests by covering the problem first.
You may want to use the Force Field Analysis Tool (next section). If the goals, objectives, and measures of the department are clear, Force Field Analysis helps build mutual understanding around forces, both controllable and uncontrollable, that are hindering or impeding participants’ efforts to reach their target goals.
Force Field Analysis improves upon a similar tool called “pros and cons.” Force Field Analysis identifies and prioritizes actions based on opportunities for improvement. The creator, Kurt Lewin, viewed Force Field Analysis as a change management remediation, when change is not occurring quickly enough or the change occurring seems to lack clear direction.
Force Field Analysis makes it easier for groups to organize their thinking while encouraging thoughtful exploration. Once supportive and hindering forces are identified, the group analyzes impact, leading to actions that reinforce the positive and mitigate the negative forces.
Force Field Analysis begins by identifying the objectives, CTQs (Critical to Quality), or the targets of change. So, facilitate clear understanding about the objectives of the change. Next, for each discrete objective (typically built in advance of a meeting and provided in a pre-read as a slide or handout), ask the following questions, one at a time:
NOTE: Use the Perspectives Tool by selecting from the more than 30 points of view that will prompt for additional forces participants might consider.
Participants’ responses generate two lists (positive, supporting forces and negative, hindering forces). Adapt the philosophy that it is easier to remove obstacles (hindrances) than to push harder (supports). Focus conversation on what we can do differently to overcome each hindrance, one at a time.
Once actions have been clarified, you may need to prioritize them. When you have more than a dozen actions, consider the Pareto principle (the 80-20 rule). If so, use PowerBalls (chapter 7), Perceptual Maps (chapter 7), or the Decision Matrix Tool (chapter 7) to prioritize. Note that your objectives are criteria, and actions are your options.
Associate each support or hindrance with an impact weight. A scale of 1 through 5 is commonly used, where 5 has greater influence. You could also force-rank based on how many items are in each column. Either way, assign the hindrances negative numbers, with –5 more harmful than –2. Compare the totals for an overall look, to the extent that the total for support factors may or may not exceed the total for hindrances being faced.
Figure 8.2. Force Field Analysis
When building responses, begin with actions to oppose the hindrances. Time permitting, look at additional actions that improve leverage for the support factors.
NOTE: My experience has shown that some hindrances require further Definition (chapter 6), some may be combined, and some forces may be so complex as to require Root Cause Analysis (chapter 8).
By scoring the power or impact of the forces, with scaling from 1 through 5, you can graphically allow for the length or width of the arrows to indicate the relative weight of the supporting and hindering forces, as in figure 8.2.
What does your deliverable from this Agenda Step look like? To us, it looks like a list—and I am not a fan of lists. More important, what are you going to do with this list, and what questions need to be asked to convert this list of symptoms into an understanding of potential causes?
Change the way participants look at the problem by changing Perspectives (next section) to identify symptoms they may have missed. The Thinking Hats Tool (chapter 8) provides additional perspectives on the situation.
NOTE: Identify the potential symptoms that make it easy to characterize or confirm the problem or issue. Consider symptoms to be “externally identifiable factors” that can be seen and observed objectively, such as “tardiness.” Some symptoms were captured during a description of the problem, but certainly not all of them.
This tool is remarkably powerful and underused. Change participants’ Perspectives to resolve an impasse or to capture innovative ideas previously not considered.
When you ask your participants to “walk in someone else’s shoes” by embracing a new perspective, you stimulate participants to change their point of view. More perspectives create more ideas, and more ideas drive decision quality. You may ask individuals or Breakout Teams (chapter 6) to each take on new perspectives. I’ve personally witnessed remarkable success using two specific Breakout Teams: monasteries and organized crime (it can be like night and day). I’m aware of alumni who love contrasting the Apple, Linux, and Microsoft perspectives.
The inputs provided by shifting perspectives are not necessarily definitive. By challenging and exploring them, we can surface problems and solutions that were not previously considered.
WW_D: What Would ________ Do? Insert analogs of famous people, organizations, or teams. Ask, “What should we add from the perspective of ________?” (fill in the blank using one of the items in this section).
NOTE: Use any of the perspectives suggested or make up your own perspectives to help participants focus their input from a specific point of view.
The 6-M’s, 7-P’s, or 5-S’s are frequently used as the main “bones” in an Ishikawa diagram. Take and choose from among the following 30 perspectives that are most germane and compelling to your situation. Also combine perspectives, including the classic views from de Bono’s Thinking Hats.
The 6-M’s perspectives:
The 7-P’s perspectives:
The 5-S’s perspectives:
Perspectives (trends) from the World Future Society
Six value or utility levers perspectives:
Seven Thinking Hats: see Thinking Hats perspectives in the next section.
NOTE: Perspectives can be used so many ways. For examples, use four perspectives to create a highly robust problem-solving panel. The intersection of common factors they may identify provides the basis for a MVP (minimum viable process or minimum viable product).
For example, if mountaineers, Sherpas, and legal authorities are all concerned with garbage and trash left behind by previous climbing parties, consensus about the importance of trash control is instantly apparent.
Use a structured Tool, inspired by Dr. Edward de Bono, that leverages existing ideas into new, better, different, or more substantial ideas.6 Refine and bolster your ideas by asking questions from the following perspectives—for example, “Let’s focus on the White Hat perspective. What are the facts and evidence?”
Thinking Hats forces perspective to capture additional, and frequently innovative, ideas and suggestions. Study the perspectives shown in figure 8.3, which are defined here:
Figure 8.3. Six Thinking Hats + One
Assign a hat (perspective) to Breakout Teams (chapter 6), the entire group, or each person, and then rotate the hats to encourage more ideas. Some claim better results from insisting that everyone wear the same color hat at the same time because it ensures everyone is looking from the same direction at the same time.
Use every hat as often as you like. Nothing prohibits you from returning to hats you have already used once.
There is no need to use every hat. Provide varying sequences of two, three, or more hats at once.
As meeting leader, permit either a pre-set order or one that is evolving. Do not, however, ask participants for the sequence (no facilitating context).
You may also use Post-it notes to have participants individually provide a bunch of ideas. If so, transcribe them so that they are legible by all participants, during a quick break.
Modify the definitions based on your own situation. However, be sure to post some type of visual legend or graphic prompt to explain the perspectives that you are seeking. See Dr. Edward de Bono’s work for other riffs and variations.
What question or questions are you going to ask that will convert your list of symptoms into potential causes?
Technically, at this point, you might conduct Root Cause Analysis (next section). Another popular technique is called an After-Action Review (chapter 8) because it focuses on issues and not people. On a practical note, you might launch a Six Sigma project to identify leading indicators and other objective measurements. During most meetings, however, we could simply take each symptom, one at a time, and ask:
What are all the likely causes of [insert symptom; for example, “redeye”]?
Most important, you cannot ask, “What are all the probable causes for all of these symptoms?” That unstructured question would have people jumping around with replies such as “insufficient training,” “wrong tools,” “fatigue” (and so on). While valid ideas can be suggested this way, if you use an unstructured style, you simply don’t know what you don’t know. An unstructured style asks for all the plausible causes for all the possible symptoms (many to many). Structure recommends focusing on one symptom at a time, asking for all the probable causes of each symptom, one at a time.
Question: “What are all the probable causes of redeye?”
Replies:
What does your deliverable look like when you are finished identifying causes? It looks like another list—since each symptom may have more than one probable cause, an even longer list. While there could be some overlap (for example, fatigue), after Clarifying (chapter 7) your list, what are you going to do with this clean list of causes? You could prioritize, of course, but what questions will you ask to convert the most important causes into an actionable plan?
To draft a detailed and actionable plan, the secret is in the specificity of the questions you ask. You cannot ask an unstructured, global-hunger question, such as “So, what’s the plan?” or “What should we do about it?”
The Ishikawa diagram (also known as a fishbone diagram; see figure 8.4) provides a systematic way of looking at potential causes or contributing factors of undesirable effects and is frequently referred to as a “cause and effect diagram.” When you facilitate Root Cause Analysis, the starting illustration resembles the skeleton of a fish with large bones (categories—remember my explanation of the big X’s) and small bones (specific potential causes within each category—remember my explanation of the little x’s).
Figure 8.4. Fishbone Diagram
The Fishbone Diagram helps the team focus on the most important causes. It would be helpful to work with a Six Sigma Green Belt, Black Belt, or Master Black Belt (MBB) who can help with this Tool and provide statistical confidence about factors and measures.
NOTE: Also consider applying the Pareto principle (80-20 rule) after you have prioritized solutions, so that you build consensus around the most important actions that should be endorsed.
Use an After-Action Review (AAR) for debriefing what went wrong with a project, program, or initiative. An After-Action Review may also be called an after-action debriefing, a look back, a postmortem, or a hot wash, among other names. In the Agile community, a similar event is called a retrospective. The logic of an AAR supports building a reflection of what caused fixable problems so that we can improve future performance.
An After-Action Review is not intended to critique or grade success or failure. Rather, it identifies weaknesses that need improvement and strengths that might be leveraged and sustained.
After-Action Review answers four “learning culture” questions:
The After-Action Review provides a candid conversation of actual performance results compared to purpose and objectives. Hence, participants contribute their subject matter expertise, input, and perspective. They provide their insight, observation, and questions that help reinforce strengths and identify and correct the deficiencies of the action being reviewed.
Learning cultures highly value collaborative inquiry and reflection. The US Armed Forces use AARs extensively, using a variety of means to collect hard, verifiable data to assess performance. The US Army refers to its evidence-based learnings as “ground truths.”
AARs value openness, candor, and frankness. Participants identify mistakes they made as well as observations of others, without attributing the mistakes to any one or group of people. Few groups open up and provide complete candor, but facilitators should encourage full disclosure. Prohibit any other use of these candid conversations, especially performance reviews and personal evaluations.
Focus on what can be learned, not who can be blamed.
The US Army’s technique uses five basic guidelines that govern its AARs, namely:
An AAR meeting takes from a partial day to an entire week. The AAR meeting may include 20 to 30 people or more, but not necessarily everyone at once. Hence, participation varies over the course of the meeting.
With more than 20 people, frequently use Breakout Teams (chapter 6). Do not hesitate to partition the meeting so that participants may come and go as required. You may need to loop back, cover material built earlier, and clarify or add to it. The After-Action Review shifts the culture from one in which blame is ascribed to one in which learning is prized yet team members willingly remain accountable.
Conduct AARs consistently after each significant project, program, or initiative. Therefore, do not isolate “failed” or “stressed” projects only. Special rules and guidelines that have proved successful in the past include these:
For learning organizations, the following points support cultural growth:
Effective use of AARs supports a mindset in organizations that are never satisfied with the status quo—where candid, honest, and open conversation evidences learning as part of the organizational culture. Learning cultures stress everyone’s roles and responsibility, and such a culture begins with using hard data to analyze actual results.
If you use an unstructured question like “What should we do about this problem?,” the cybersecurity technicians start talking about all sorts of things:
They spend most of their meeting in scope (they are not talking about fütball the entire meeting). But when does the meeting end? Not when the list is exhausted. Rather, the meeting ends when the time runs out. Why? People have another meeting to attend; someone else reserved the meeting room; and so on.
If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. With the unstructured style, even though we captured good stuff, there is no way to know what we missed. The nature of “poor requirements” is that omissions can be more expensive than errors.
NOTE: Although a separate activity, it will not take much time to identify the people, agents, or actors (personas) who will participate in the solution or plan (for example, participants, management, contractors).
If you embrace the structured tactic, you know exactly what to do and what four questions you are going to ask for each and every cause (for example, fatigue):
NOTE: Here you populate a matrix with the personas and timeline. The quickest way to proceed with the “x” dimension (horizontal or longitudinal—usually time runs from left to right) separately covers the before and after phases (such as what can be done to prevent each cause and then separately, what can be done to cure for each cause, repeating for each identified persona).
Which one of these four questions can you afford to skip? None of them, of course. But business is not always this elementary. Many times, there is a third type of persona: contractors. Sometimes there is a third point in time: during. Look at the matrix in table 8.1 and note that you might need to ask nine questions about each cause because you do not know which ones, if any, you can afford to skip.
I know table 8.1 gives a lot of people headaches. Knowing that to be thorough, participants must answer nine questions about each cause, the general reaction is, “Screw it—let’s just have a meeting and discuss it.”
How’s that unstructured style working out for you? Don’t forget that the terms “discussion,” “percussion,” and “concussion” are all related. If you have a headache when you depart a meeting, the reason is that the meeting was not structured and you are not sure what, if anything, was accomplished.
Table 8.1. Solution Stack (also known as Headache)
Timing / Persona |
Before Burnout (preventative solutions) |
During Burnout (mitigating solutions) |
After Burnout (curative solutions) |
Management |
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Cybersecurity employee |
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Contractors |
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Warm-Ups may be used to set the tone for Brainstorming (chapter 6) or general problem-solving meetings. The Warm-Ups Tool helps groups to stimulate mind-expanding ideas and conversation, make unusual connections, and analyze relationships.
Warm-Ups can be conducted individually or with Breakout Teams (chapter 6); the Tool is very friendly to online meeting settings. Be creative and make up your own Warm-Ups, striving to select themes related to your meeting deliverables or product or project endeavors.
Simply give your group some basic commands. Most important, add your own objects (“things”) to modify these questions:
SCAMPER gives you a “hip-pocket” Tool—an unplanned way of developing appropriate questions on an impromptu basis. You may also use SCAMPER to take raw input (unedited lists) and challenge participants to clarify their input further, thus improving input.
Select appropriate questions using the mnemonic “SCAMPER” and challenge some of the initial input. Challenges help the group understand the objective nature of what is being described and encourage developing new options.
SCAMPER Checklist:
Once we have a set of candidate solutions (what or Actions), we should test them for efficacy. To what extent do proposed solutions support the intended purpose (built in Agenda Step 2)? If clear objectives were built or are available, conduct Alignment (chapter 6). More important, will performing all these solutions get us from where we are to where we need to be?
If not, or if uncertain, we need to facilitate identification of the reason, immediately followed by identifying what other solutions should be considered. If thorough and acceptable, we can take the solutions and make assignments of Roles and Responsibilities (chapter 6) or, for now, simply wrap up.
Because no one can assuredly predict future states, prudent organizations rely on Scenario Planning to allow the possibility of sunny skies, stormy skies, or cloudy skies. Building scenarios and ranges begins in the next section.
Probabilities consist of shared assumptions, beliefs, and outlooks about some future state or condition. Forward-looking deliverables such as five-year plans and shaping curves rely exclusively on the concept of probabilities, since no future state is certain.
How can a meeting facilitator help resolve arguments around conflicting probabilities, particularly when evidence supports multiple outcomes? The answer is by creating ranges and not relying on fixed numbers.
Strive to avoid building one set of “answers.” Rather, build multiple answers—such as five answers. Facilitate mutual understanding around the following five scenario types.
Dare your participants to think positive. Ask them to relieve themselves from concerns about risks and other exogenous factors. Strive to build and agree on a “best likely” scenario, akin to sunny skies and clear sailing. Don’t allow impediments or other negative throttles. While unlikely, the sunny skies scenario provides one Bookend Rhetoric (chapter 7) number or set of projections that would be unlikely to be exceeded within the period specified.
Take your participants in the opposite direction. Allow for every conceivable catastrophe or injurious situation. Try to fall short of “bankruptcy” or “going out of business,” but relent if your participants make an urgent claim that complete “death” is one outcome.
Having built the two prior scenarios, take a closer look at the sunny skies scenario and predict some of the most likely occurrences. Strive to make this view and set of projections positive, but not extreme. If necessary, use PowerBalls (chapter 7) to rank the importance of assumptions, and toggle or adjust only the most important outcomes, leaving the others untouched.
With Bookend Rhetoric, move again in the opposite direction by taking a closer look at the stormy skies scenario and toggle some of the least likely occurrences. Here you want to facilitate their development of a set of negative but not extreme projections. Have participants study past performance and downturns for reliable percentages. Again, if necessary, use PowerBalls to rank the impact of assumptions, and toggle only the most impactful outcomes, leaving the others untouched.
Take the four scenarios and projections to drive consensus around the most likely range. Force participants to defend their arguments with evidence, facts, and real-life examples. Have participants agree or disagree with the prioritized lists of assumptions, and revisit the prioritization if necessary. Along the way, begin to listen and note any projections being suggested as “most likely” because they can help establish an agreeable midpoint for final projections and ranges.
Further analysis can take the range and establish targets and thresholds for on-target performance (green lights), cautionary performance (yellow lights), and intervention performance (red lights). Avoid an unstructured discussion. Carefully and extensively document and define assumptions. Remember to use Definitions (chapter 6), since you may discover participants in violent agreement with one another!
NOTE: The value of a meeting facilitator is rarely greater than when serving as a referee for future conditions that cannot be proven, even using evidence-based support.
Follow the four-activity sequence for the Review and Wrap explained in chapter 5. None of the four activities should ever be skipped entirely, so expand and contract based on your situation and constraints.
Effective leaders will not disband their meetings until participants have been offered a final opportunity to comment or question, actions have been assigned, messaging has been agreed to, and feedback for continuous improvement has been solicited.
Problem-solving meetings are a hybrid of planning meetings and decision-making meetings; we typically combine parts of each to build a robust solution. Taking the time to be creative or to turn creative ideas into something innovative, something measurable, distinguishes problem-solving sessions.
To that end:
1 J. W. Getzels, “Problem Finding and the Inventiveness of Solutions” (1975).
2 For other ideas and more detail, see The Thinker’s Toolkit: 14 Powerful Techniques for Problem Solving (1998) by former CIA agent Morgan D. Jones.
3 Terms that are grayed out are for your eyes only and not to be shown on your Basic Agenda.
4 While this Problem-Solving Approach appeals to the Purpose expression to ascertain the value of proposed actions, you may add an additional Agenda Step to develop a set of criteria (or constraints) that optimal actions should support.
5 On a practical note, when the topic is “politically sensitive,” Change Management might be an additional Agenda Step—to develop a plan to reduce resistance to the proposed actions (solution).
6 Edward de Bono, “Six Thinking Hats,” n.d., https://www.debonogroup.com/services/core-programs/six-thinking-hats/.
7 The Pareto principle (also known as the 80-20 rule) suggests that in most situations, 80% of outputs or effects are derived from 20% of inputs or causes.
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