Ah the joy of solving problems. Not puzzles, mind you, problems. Puzzles are a different animal. They are created for entertainment, and have a solution. Puzzles usually rely on a set of parameters that a participant needs to understand in order to find that solution, and often there’s a trick or unclear parameter that is the key. I rarely feel like I’ve learned something after solving a puzzle, I just feel like I’ve learned a magician’s trick – ( <– Only organic emdashs are used in this article ), taking a little of the mystery out of life.
Problems are different. Problems, challenges, obstacles, barriers, whatever you want to call them are part of life. Problems intrigue me. There may be an answer, but while it’s not guaranteed, the possibility of a solution is there. Somewhere. Sometimes hidden, sometimes buried in a place no one else has thought to look. Sometimes it’s not a full solution, but an improvement. A step in a longer journey that me or someone after me can build on. Finding that solution, or finding that step in the direction of a larger solution is a journey that builds knowledge, knowledge that can be applied to future problems. To me that’s exciting. Expanding what I know and have experienced, and using that information to solve something more complex next time. That’s also one of the reasons I’ve enjoyed working with startups, or in-company skunkworks teams. How do we solve this problem? Other’s have faced it, and came up with nothing. Can we do better?
One of the interesting parts of solving a problem is understanding what the real problem is. Defining the root cause that needs to be attacked. Bigger problems are more complex and often have a string or chain of issues. Smaller problems with inputs and outputs in series that end up causing the big problem.
Problem Solving Tools
There are multiple frameworks that are specifically designed to help people work through problems and get to a true solution: 5 Whys, Phred Problem Solving, process analysis and more. These are helpful, and good training, and from what I’ve experienced, each one has a slightly different twist that works for a segment of the problem universe. It’s smart to understand all of these approaches and use them as a box of tools. A hammer won’t fix everything – a big toolbox full of different tools is always helpful. Be careful though, it’s easy to focus on tool collection instead of tool use. The ‘one tool for one type of problem’ mentality will leave you stuck and searching for new tools instead of focusing your effort on the problem. Learn and understand how each tool can be applied, either as designed or in a new creative way and you’ll be better off.
Errors in Understanding Problems
An example I love to use for that (to me) illustrates an amazing error in problem solving is an old BBC clip of a mechanical system from the 70’s that was designed to deliver teleprinter messages (video option 1 | video option 2) directly to a recipient at their desk. It’s important to note that his was before the internet and email – I’ll come back to that. Their existing system was for a person to pull the paper off the teleprinter and carry the paper with the message to the person’s desk. All day. All over the office. What a pain! They wanted a solution that would be faster, easier, and more efficient, and wouldn’t require a human to physically deliver the messages. You’ve probably seen other solutions for this in movies and shows set in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s where there are massively complex pneumatic tube systems that all feed back to a central mail room. Pop a message in the tube, send it to the mail room, and they redirect into someone else’s tube and the message is delivered. I love the look and feel of these, but they are sort of clunky, and are incredibly expensive to build and maintain.
In the BBC video, some engineering firm created a new solution that used the emerging technology of electronics and sensors to route messages. They build a system of tracks all over the office, and each office had an electronic identity represented by little metal switches. If you want to send a message, you put it in a folder, adjust the addressing switches on the folder to the right destination, and put the folder on a track. The folder would travel around the track until it got to the office with the matching address switches. Brilliant! One person could be near the teletype and easily send messages all around the company as soon as they came in. As a bonus, people in offices could also send messages to anyone else the same way, put it in a folder, set the switches, and put it on the track. At the destination, the folder takes an offramp for the track and drops into the recipients inbox. At the time, amazing! And it makes everyone look busy to see all these folders zipping around the office. The executives had to be thrilled! They had invested a lot of money to solve one problem, and it looks like they solved three problems: delivering messages from the teletype, delivering interoffice messages, and making everyone more efficient. The busy looking activity was icing on the cake.
Let’s look a little closer, though. I’m not sure what the meetings were, who gave the instructions, or who was in charge of scoping the project, but it seems that the problem was defined as ‘we need to get these papers to a person’s desk faster with less human support.’ That problem definition was given to a mechanical engineering firm. The parameters of the problem were defined in physical terms, and then a firm skilled in building physical machines was hired to build a solution. With these parameters and understanding of the problem, it makes sense that the solution delivered was a mechanical system that delivered physical media. It’s a totally sensible and effective solution, right?
From today’s perspective, of course this is ludicrous. Please understand, I’m not criticizing anyone, it was a different time, and we have a vastly different understanding of information now. But it’s the reason I love this video and use it to discuss problem solving. Here are the points that this illustrates so well:
- Defining the problem
- In the first step, the problem was defined as delivering the PAPER with the message. The medium was considered a critical component of the problem. The person who defined the problem didn’t see that the MESSAGE was the important part, not the medium.
- Tools for the solution
- The tools identified to address the problem were selected to match the physical media defined in the problem statement. The emphasis on the physical paper pigeonholed any solution into a mechanical, physical process.
- Craftsmen with the tools
- With the problem and tools defined, the next step was to select experts in those tools. Mechanical engineers were selected based on their skill with physical delivery and tracking systems. They weren’t asked to deliver the message content, they were asked to deliver the paper media. So they did to the best of their ability.
In our electronic world, this now seems silly. We know the message and information is the valuable component. Not the paper. That shift in perspective and updated knowledge makes it easy to ask ‘Why didn’t they just figure out a way to put names or addresses into the teletype messages?’ There are many other available solutions at the time as well, but the definition of the problem, the tools at hand, and the craftsmen with tool knowledge defined guardrails for the solution. The inputs defined the output.
Wrap up
The point of this is that unlike puzzles with a clear solution, problems live within a much more interesting and challenging universe. The answer isn’t always clear because it can be constrained and obfuscated by the way we define it, the tools we understand how to use, and our current skills. It’s critical to recognize these barriers that we put in place as we search for solutions to our problems. Don’t simply optimize what exists, work to understand the full system and flow of inputs and outputs and build from there.
Epilogue: The Disrupters
In the current business world we hear the term ‘disrupters’ used a lot, possibly over used, but for many cases it fits. Someone is willing to look at a problem from a fresh angle, and instead of simply making an incremental improvement on what exists, they are able to take an entirely new approach. Sometimes that results in a new solution that no one ever expected, and sometimes it makes the problem itself obsolete. The point is they examined all the inputs and outputs, and then looked at them within the wider context of their containing system and beyond.
For all facets of business problems – sales, marketing, operations, product development, delivery, accounting, and on and on – it’s critical to step back and see the forest, the trees, the undergrowth, the water table, the animal life, and understand how they all work together for success.