Transcripts
1. Introduction: Problem solving is
a critical skill in all aspects of business. From people, problems to technical problems and from short term to long
term problems. Let's say problem solving happened in every
anchor of business. And for selecting
the best option, the decision making part, you would use both
logic and intuition. As I started out,
life as an engineer, a consultant, a management,
and an instructor, I started on technical
problems before going on to management and
having to deal with more with people problems
and system problems. And I saw this as an opportunity
because every problem that comes up is a chance for all of us to improve what we do. This class will
help with all sorts of techniques you can learn and use to increase your creativity and to improve your
decision making. It's an important and
fascinating area and you can learn to be good at
it. See you in the class.
2. What is the Root Cause of the Problem?: The absolute first step in the process of problem solving, the one that often gets
missed out is to be sure you have got the
accurate right cause. Facing the wrong root
cause will not help. For example, replacing
the wrong part, installing the wrong
software version, or even replacing
the wrong person. This happens all the
time and everywhere. For example, many people think that if they
could get pay rise, they would enjoy their work more and be happy in their life. But money might not
be the cause of their unhappiness or their lack of enjoyment of their job. Or if you are not sleeping well, is because the fact that
your bed is not comfortable enough or the room is not dark
enough or there is noise, or is it stress
inside your head? If it is stress, then a
new bed will not help. Sometimes we do not
know the cause, we resort to living with
the problem instead, in manufacturing
inside the factories, this would mean using
inspection to just throw away the bad ones,
which is wasteful. And also a few bad ones will surely still
always get through. In one factory where I
worked as consultant, they made very thin plastic bags and the machine had
about 80 settings. There were lots of rollers with temperature and pressure
and speed settings. And when the machine
was working badly, just filed with everything, hoping to get the
combination right. It was only after
months of experimenting that we found that the cause
was from only one roller. It had to be running at
just the right speed. We put a very accurate speed controller on
that one roller. It was finding the cause.
That was the real key. Sometimes there are two causes and you only know
about one of them. The problem continues even after you think
you have fixed it. An example of this would be your computer, laptop
running slowly. And maybe there are a number of unwanted applications
running on it. Finding just one
will not be enough. Sometimes one cause may have two or more effects and
you only see the effects. You start to assume that one
effect is causing the other. For example, in cold weather, more people exercise in
the gin and some get into difficulties and even find which is clearly a problem
that needs solving. But also in cold weather, more people drink juice. If you were monitoring
these two things, you would notice a correlation between juice consumption
and fainting. And you might start thinking
about banding juice. But in fact, if you band juice, you would not solve
the problem at all. Because you have not
got to the root cause, which is the cold weather state. Money is to work out the
cause and tackle that. You have to make sure
it is the real cause. The best way to do that is
to compare control groups. Is there a difference in
the exercising accidents between people who have drum choice and those who have not? If all the people who get into difficulties have recently
been drinking juice, then it may indeed be the cause unless everyone in the
gym has drum juice, comparing the proportions
of choice drinking in the gym and in the gym course
who get into difficulties, that is the way to prove
it is the real cause. If it is not, then you have to keep looking
for what might be. The first part of the process is to get a list of
possible causes. Everything that is different about the ones who
have a problem. Then work out which one are
ones are the real cause. Then you can work on fixing that problem for the
problem you have in mind. What is the root
cause and are you sure there are not any
other causes as well?
3. Dig Deeper by Asking Five Whys: Many times it has
happened that the cause of a problem might have
an even deeper cause. And it is necessary to track
them right down to the root. For doing this, there is an effective technique
known as the Five Is. The idea is that you ask
why maybe up to five times, certainly more than once, until you get right down to
the start of the problem. For example, the phone number
is wrong in the company. Contact this directory
phone number wrong. You could just put it right. But first, why is it wrong? Because Po type in the wrong. Why did Pedo type it wrong? Because Peter was a
temporary intern who maybe did not care or
perhaps was not trained. Why was someone like
Peter doing this job? Why was not Peter train? Why did not someone check
what Peter was doing? Because there is not a
proper quality system for looking after interns. No quality system. Why is not the quality system? You could see how
asking why a few times begins to uncover a whole lot
of problems in the system. In fact, sometimes the five
Y's are not just a chain, they can be more of a tree. Sometimes there are
several underlying causes. For example, why was
the delivery late? Well, it could have been
that we were short of staff, maybe a machine broke down, or perhaps we had a last
minute quality problem. You then need to find out why these three things happened. Again, shortage of staff could
have a number of causes. You end up with a tree of causes and they all
need to be sorted. Sometimes the five is can
go around in a circle. For example, why are we running out of fish
in the Pacific? It is because
fishermen are using nets with smaller
mesh and are catching all the small fish before
they can grow into big ones small nets. But why is that? It is because there are
no big ones left. They have to catch
the smaller ones. But why are there
no big fish left? It is because all the small
ones are being caught. Hang on a minute. We
have just been there. What is happening is
that the small nets are causing there to
be no big ones left. And that means we have to have
smaller and smaller nets. In this case, we have to break the loop and stop the
use of smaller nets, which is not going to be easy, but usually the five
is in an organization, ends up pointing to one place
and that is management. For example, quality problems
are caused by lack of training or processes which are caused by a lack of
attention from management. Bad boss is caused by a system that encourages
bad behavior, maybe politics or bullying. And the cause of the
system being like that is lack of measurement
of real results or lack of alignment
objectives between departments or lack of training or lack of monitoring of staff morale. These are all management
problems for management end, everything is
management's fault. And of course, the result
of this is that it is not necessarily in
management's interest to ask why too many times, although a good manager
would still do this, a bad manager would often just rather fix the surface
problem rather than dig deeper and
find something big and expensive and
possibly their fault. But to solve the problem, you must get to the root cause. Or if you keep propping up, I would like you to ask why
at least two or three times for the problem that you
have in mind at the moment. And maybe draw it
out as a tree as you find more than one
possible underlying cause. And keep digging deeper until you feel that you have
cut the railroad.
4. Kepner-Tregoe Method: From the past.
Back in the 1950s, Ketna and Trico came up with the Etna Trico problem
solving method, which is still in use today. It is a very comprehensive
and mechanical process where you analyze the situation, define the problem,
and the causes, sometimes known as
root cause analysis. Then you identify and
evaluate possible solutions, select the best one, and then you consider
possible risks with the solution
that you have chosen. It is obviously brilliant and it was originally used by Nasa. But generally I think fall on Keta Trico is probably
a bit over the top. For more smaller
problems that you I might be working on start with something like a
computer problem you can experiment to find out
really is a problem and really is not
often by swapping things over when the
computer will not print. The first thing we try and our team is that we
tried Etna Trigo. This will involve, does
it print from the laptop? If yes, then it is
not the printer. It is your computer. If no,
then it is the printer. The other printer, the one that uses a wire rather than Wi Fi. This will tell us
about the Wi Fi. Does it print some
documents and not others? This will tell us whether the problem is within
office applications. Similarly, if something
will not switch on, it might be the fuse in the plug or a faulty
connecting lead. The thing itself might
be dead cabinet. Trico would say, try it
with a different lead. Of course, you might
have two faulty leads. But if you use a lead
that is working with a different appliance and then swap it into your faulty one, then you can find out
if it is the lead on the actual piece of
equipment that is broke. Also, try plugging it into a different socket in
case it is the socket, swap everything over until you find out what the
problem really is. This even applies to people. If you have an underperforming
person, try moving them, swapping them with someone else, then you can really find out if it is the person or
something in the job. For example, the manager. I hope you like this part of
Kitt trickle as much as I do Now for your problem
that you have in mind, could you swap something over and see if the
problem carries on or goes away in each case?
What would that tell you?
5. Pareto Principle: Now I kit for
problem solving from Italian economist
named Fredo Perito. Most people have heard
of the 80 20 principle, which is also known as
the Pero principle. Other names for this principle are the Law of the vital field, on the principle of factors Pos, which started with the
observation that 80% of the land in the Kingdom
of Italy in 18 96, was owned by 20% of the people. The 80 20 rule apply to a lot of other things to do some math that I will not go into here. For example, 80% of your problems probably
come from 20% of your customers and 80% of your problems will come
from 20% of the causes. In other words, there are a few underlying causes that are causing most
of your problems. But what is the use
of knowing this? Well, the point is
that if you focus on eradicating just 20%
of your problems, you will save 80% of the cost, 80% of the time and money
that they are costing you. The first, that is to
work out what they are. You make a list of all
your problems and work out the cost of each and
then tackle the top ones. You can look, for example, of any problems such as lock on. The reasons that machines in
your factory have to stop for all the reasons that you send items back to suppliers. The reason that time gets
wasted on the causes of compat, reasons why people
leave the company and then you lock those
for each time they happen. Or you measure the cost of
them each time they happen. You will soon be able to add up which ones are the
main culprits. The good news is that
there will not be many to tackle out of, say, ten causes. You will only need
to tackle two. The other eight being
on the small ones, that only add up to
20% of the cost. If you think about it,
these top two costs are not just four times as
costly as the other eight. They are 16 times
a costly because being only 20% there are a
quarter as many of them, and being worth 80% there are four times as
expensive in total. So that is a factor of 16. It is really important
to focus on them. In other words, if
two of them cost $800 and the remaining
eight of them cost the remaining $200 then the first two are costing $400 each, and the other eight are
costing only $25 each. So that is indeed a factor of 16 between the most
valuable and the rest. You would be mad not to
focus on those top two. I saw an amazing
video of a top where the guy prioritized all the biggest
problems in the world, such as overpopulation,
starvation, war, disease, climate
change, et cetera. And he generated them for size and chances of being
able to fix them. The analysis said that we
should just focus on the top two instead of trying to fix them all and failing
on all of them. If you can do that, you
can list your problems in your organization or
in your life and then work out which one or
two the target first. And really focus on the top 20% thinking about your
example problem, what are all the
possible causes. And then can you measure which
are the top 20% of those?
6. Whole System Thinking: You can identify
the root cause of the problem by keeping
of the whole system. There is a great book called
White Things Bite Back, which says that often
you will fix something, but it will somehow
come back again. For example, when they made
kids playground safer by putting big soft sponge on the ground around
the climbing frames. All that happened was that
the kids climbed higher and jumped off more because they knew there was
soft sponge there. The number of
accidents stayed the same because the kids
frisk tolerance was still the same ratio until they were somewhere
without soft sponge. And then of course
they had not learned what it feels like to
fall onto concrete. Another example would be that the city committees might think that widening a road might
improve traffic congestion, but in fact, you would probably just get more
people using that road. Since it is now quicker to use, you end up with a congested road again and no improvement
in journey time. The key is to think
about what will happen over time if
you make your change. In the book, the
fifth discipline, Peterson says that humans are
not going a planning ahead. In fact, anything that has a time lag of more than
about 2 seconds flows. If there is a two second
time lag in the shower, you turn up the warm and you
think this is not working, you turn it up some
more and it is too hot. So you turn it right down
and then it is freezing. It is the same if
you try to drive a supercar in a computer game, and there is a slight
time lag on the steering, it is really hot and you end up swerving left and
then swerving right. Of course, in your work there might be a time lag
of months between the price change
and the amount you sell advertising and
how much you sell. During which time you
would be thinking, cut the price more or cancel the advertising.
It is not working. While I am talking about
Peter Sina's book, I want to mention another idea from which relates
to problem solving. And how we are not put a standing back and looking
at the whole system. He calls it the
illusion of control. Often managers make decisions based on the evidence
that they have. They are basically reacting to the situation and
any sensible manager would make that same decision. Production is behind schedule, so let's work overtime
At the weekend. The manager thinks
they are in control, but really they are just
a cog in the machine. Next, the costs of
overtime are too high. There is a big cutback, but then production starts
to get behind again. It is just like the person swinging the temperature
around in the shower. Ideally, the manager
would stand back and analyze the system and set
it up in the optimal way. Says that systems consist of feedback loops and time delays. It is the combination of these that we are
bad at coping with. The feedback comes
back to bite you, but later you do not worry about it until later
when you have got worse. But if you draw the problem
out, there's a flow diagra. You can then think about
how to cut the loop in case of lower quantity of
fish in Pacific over fishing, where it is the logical
action for each fisherman in the short term to make his net smaller to get
the remaining fish. But in the longer term, they all lose
because they end up chasing after smaller
and smaller fish. But once they understand
the system and see that smaller next to everyone
getting smaller fish, they can see that they need
to bring in quarters and net controls and work together to get the
stops back up again. Then we can all gain and it is the same
in an organization. Once you realize that
stopping training will lead to more
problems later, or that cutting people's pay
might not save you money in the long run because you will not be able to retain
or recruit good people. Or that cutting your
prices might not lead to enough new sales to make up for the loss in profit margin. You can then make
scientific decisions for your problem and the solution that you
are considering. Can you see any longer
term effects that might end up coming
back again and again?
7. Adjust Your Speed of Thinking: Many people solve
problems intuitively. They just lead to an amazing
and quick new answer. They probably could not even
tell you how they did it, they just jump there. But if they cannot make the leap for some reason,
then they are stuck. If the problem involves
conditions and numbers, they is much harder for them. Other people use
the logical side of their brain much more. They like to slowly
nibble away at the problem until they
have solved all it. This works really well
for some problems, but if there is an
intuitive leap to be made, then they cannot make that lead. It is clear that ideally you would use both parts
of your brain. All of your brain, the
intuitive, the logical part. Sometimes you can do
this by working with the two different types of people so everything
gets covered. What if you are on your own? You should definitely try to tap into both parts
of your ability. They are both there
somewhere in your brain. You can practice
by using a bit of analyzing the
creatively, then logic, begin to think about what
it means to tidy it up, ready for the next creatively. Try to use all the parts of your brain for whatever
your problem is. Are you personally
more prone to using just logic or more of the
creative part of your brain? Which part could you
consciously work on developing?
8. Effective Brainstorming: Everyone ever heard?
The best known process for generating ideas
is a good brainstorm? But in any way, what I want
to say about brainstorms is that most people do
their brainstorms round in one simple way. But it is really important, and that is that they judge
each idea as it comes up. Instead of just getting lots
of ideas in step one and then completely separately in step two, judging the ideas. It is human nature
to judge each idea, but you must resist
the temptation, just write each one on the
list as if it is fine, even if it is utterly stupid. Get every idea on the list. There are four reasons
for doing it like this. First is that you can bounce from a stupid idea
to a great one, who knows where that
stupid idea might lead. Second is that it puts a
damper on people's creativity. If their ideas are criticized and you want to
keep them rolling, keep all those ideas coming, maybe they will have
to pass through ten bad ideas before they
come up with a good one. And you do not want to switch them off after the first ten, or perhaps after the first one, by telling them that
their ideas are not good enough. Third is ownership. People waste time and bias the process by arguing
for their own ideas. They naturally defend
their own ideas. Why did you just
make a great big less then come back
to judging it later? People do not feel the need to defend their own ideas so much, often cannot even remember
whose idea was which. They can properly judge each one and choose
the actual best one. You do not just end up
with the one that was suggested by the most
dominant person. Finally, the fourth
reason is that you are using different parts of your
brain for the two phases. The first creative phase is using what is known
as the right brain. Childish, fun, creative part
needs to be on maximum. Then in the second phase, you use the logical
adult sensible, often called left brain,
to judge the ideas. This is a completely
different mode. It will be really hard to swap between the two
modes constantly. In fact, most people in a bad brainstorm just
stick to one mode. A few people are suggesting ideas and the others
are judging them. You lose the creativity of half the group and the creative
ones just start to hate the others Much better
to have everyone being creative and then later
everyone judging there. That is all you need to
know about brainstorming. Everyone coming up with
ideas written up on a board with no judging,
no criticizing aloud. Then later you go through, the man says which
ones are best.
9. Approaching Problem with Mind Map: One of the famous
tool when I have got a complicated problem
to solve is a mind map. There is something
about them that just feels natural and it
helps me to think They work much better than a list numbering here is what
the mind map looks like. They were invented by
Tony Busen in 1974. The good thing about them
is that they really do reflect how you think They
make a problem visual. They use both your creative side and your structured
thinking side. They are quick to
draw and you can add extra items in any order
just as you think of them. Also, because it
starts in the middle, as you spread out, there is always space from
our subsections. These are effective tips
for making them work extra. Well, firstly, use paper or canvas in landscape mode
rather than portrait. I do not know how Tony
Blon decided this, but I'm pretty sure he is right. It does just feel
better somehow. Next, use color, and ideally pictures and
cartoons as well, to bring your mind map to life. Then consider using
a whiteboard. If you are at work, they
have lots of space. Rubbing out is easy and
the whole group can contribute to mapping out the problem and the
possible solutions. Then you can photograph it with your phone once
it's finished next. Perhaps surprisingly, tablets are great for
drawing mind maps because you can move the
branches around with your fingers if one area
gets a bit crowded. In fact, with some
versions of the branches automatically space themselves
out as you add more. Also on the tablet, you can zoom out to see the whole thing and then zoom
in to look at parts of it. And you can hide sections if you want to have
loads of detail, but not get confused by
seeing it all in one go. You could even use your
phone to draw mind maps. There are free apps, although personally I find the screen
of the phone a bit small. You do need some decent space for drawing out a
proper mind map. I think a couple of other uses for mind maps
while I am on the subject, and number one, not taking. It's been shown that retention
of a subject is greater if you draw out a mind map better
than just writing notes. Number two, use not to explaining something
to other people. A mind map can be better
than bullet points. All you need is a sheet of paper with a mind
map sketched on it, or a graphic on the screen
to 0.2 The one limitation of mind maps is that if you have multiple causes and
multiple solutions, say solution y will
help with causes 1.2 The mind map isn't
great for showing how they all link up, but overall, I would strongly recommend the mind map for
approaching any problem, either when you are on
your own thinking through it or working with a
group who need to see it. If you have never
used a mind map, then you should definitely
give them a try. Maybe after the decision, you could try drawing one out for a problem, but
you have in mind.
10. Create Decision Trees: One step on from a mind
map is a decision tree. They've actually been
around quite a bit longer, and many people think they're just the same as a mind map, but actually they're
quite different. The point about decision
trees is that they have a time access rather than
just being part of a picture, which is what a mind map is. There are a sequence
of possible events, the unfolding of a chess game. If we do this, then three
things might happen. If the first one
of those happens, then we could do either
choice or choice B. And if we choose, then several
things might then happen. It all multiplies out. There's a big tree.
The first thing you do is you draw out the
tree at each stage, all the things
that might happen, then all the things that you
could do for each of those, and then all the things
that might then happen. It alternates between
you and the world. Things that you do and
things the world does back. Sometimes this is enough. You can look at the
branches and you can think, I don't want to
go down that one. The options are mostly bad. For example, volunteering for
the first flight to Mars. I can't think of many good
outcomes for that one, you're being more scientific. You can go to the next
level and you can put on probabilities and values. First, you would
put probabilities on each of the branches. Say there's only a 15% chance that a new competitor will
open up in your town. You've got new competitor
and you would put a 15% on that branch and say there's an 85% chance that we'll
be the only supplier. Only supplier, 85% Or
maybe there's a 60, 40 chance that prices will go
up next year kind of thing. You can then put values
on the outcomes. Maybe it's worth
$1 million a year to successfully open
a hotel in your town. You would put your
million dollars on there. A branch with an 85% chance of successfully opening is
worth 85% of $1 million, which is $850,000 Here's
a very simple example. Staying with the hotels team, say we have two options. We can open a hotel in Chicago, or we can open one
in Pittsburgh. And say the Chicago one has
a 60% chance of success, 60% while in Pittsburgh one
has a 40% chance of success. But the difference
is the Chicago one, if it is successful, we made you $1,000,000 While the Pittsburgh
one, if it's successful, we made you $2,000,000 Then you can see that
the Pittsburgh one is a better choice because
the branch is worth $800,000 And this is because 40% of $2,000,000 is $800,000
Whereas the Chicago one, 60% of $1,000,000 is worth only $600,000 The Pittsburgh branch is the one that
we're going to take. This little tree could be
part of a bigger tree. The opening hotel is
part of the tree, is worth $800,000 because we're going to take
the Pittsburgh branch. Maybe the opening
casinos branch of the whole bigger picture could
be worth more than that. You could see how you
could draw out all of your options as well
as being wider. The tree could be
deeper as well. Suppose the Pittsburgh Hotel
could be run for ten years, or it could be sold
off after two. And we could evaluate both
of these sub branches, and whichever is greater
say if it goes well, we could sell it for $1,500,000 But running it successfully
for ten years would make us $2,000,000 Then clearly it's the
$2,000,000 that goes to the value of the
Pittsburgh branch because that's the one
we're going to choose, that's why we had $2,000,000 There's this branch that
we're going to choose. You can see that
the decision tree is a lot more than a mind map. It's got a timeline, It's got option with
probabilities and values. And it enables you to work
out the value of each branch. Once you know the probabilities
of each option happening, it helps you map out
what might happen. And then also to
choose the best route that you start out
down the tree. Is there anything
that you have in mind where all sorts
of things might happen in the future
that you could try drawing out as
a decision tree?
Suppachok Nitsoonkit, PhD
