Episode #561: Creative Problem Solving

Japan has a lot of wisdom to share and one of my favourites is to not start with the solution to a problem. In Japan, the idea is to start with making sure you have the right problem to solve. This is not easy, because often we are super busy and moving at warp speed all the time, so just jumping in to fix a problem sounds like the best approach. There is a follow-on metaphor of the scaling of the wall. We work hard and progress rung by rung up the ladder, getting us to the top - the solution – only to find our ladder is up against the wrong wall. We don’t want that, do we?

Problem definition is sometimes obscured by having a number of factors to confront and not enough insight into which are the priority items. This might be for a lack of a data or from conflicting opinions. The issue remains a large one, though, which we must deal with at the very start of the process.

Here are some steps to consider in problem definition.

Step One: Silence Is Our Super Power
Once we get into an open discussion about identifying the problem, we can find we waste a lot of time and basically get no progress. We argue the toss on what to solve and can get stuck. Instead, have around six people in a team and have them all sit in silence and think. Now thinking is seriously hard work. It is particularly difficult for us today, because we are being corralled by algorithms spewing out one minute videos, fostering shorter and shorter concentration spans.

Ask the team to sit there for fifteen minutes in Round One and do nothing but think and write their issues on Post-It notes. This will be torture for some and very challenging for most. Nevertheless, as the organiser, we have to have guts to ignore the fervent and persistent impatient glancing at watches, head shaking, eyes rolling, yawning, etc., that will go on, as the team is possessed by a wave of boredom.

Step Two: Prioritise Issues
After the first fifteen minutes, everyone stays in silence and now we spend 3 minutes to arrange what we have come up with into a broad priority listing of where to start.

Step Three: Share Together - Round One
Now we start putting our ideas up on a chart or a wall. We attach the Post Its in priority order to the wall and explain our thinking to our colleagues. There is no judgement allowed at this point, because we are still on the journey and we don’t need any decision being taken yet.

Step Four: Whole Team Sharing
Once we get our teams idea’s out, we share it with the other teams and they do the same for us. We try to cross pollinate the thinking going on. There is no evaluation of what has been produced at this point.

Step Five: Think and Prioritise
After that stimulation, again, in silence, we keep thinking for another ten minutes. This is very hard because all the easy ideas have been tapped. Now we have to really dig to find the gold. We will adjust our previous priorities based on our new ideas.

Step Six: Share Together - Round Two
We bring our Post-It notes and add to what we came up with in the first thinking bracket. Again, we share the content with our teammates.

Step Seven: Whole Team Sharing Round Two
Again, each team presents what they have come up with, so that all the teams can share in the ideas.

Step Eight: Each Team Makes Selections
By this stage, we will have had a lot of information shared and we will have a pretty good idea of where everyone has placed their priorities. Now we have to make some decisions about which will be the issues which we will take forward to solve. Each team will coalesce the possibilities into a short list.

Step Nine: Whole Team Makes The Final Selections
Each team presents their selections and then decisions are taken on which issues are going to be picked up to work on.

There is usually a strong raft of similar issues which will have been highlighted. These commonalities make it easy to drive decisions about the final problems to work on. Remember, we are not after perfection here, so if we get good selections, then we are on the right track. We have created a hierarchy of issues to work with and we can get to them all over time. We start with what we consider the most burning issues.

The next stage is to use creative thinking to work on how to solve the issues once clarified and we covered that in a recent episode already.