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Introduction Making a start This is a start! To give this a sense of purpose we can think about what we want to achieve. • Introduce you to the ideas of problem solving Problem solving is more than just coming up with good ideas. Good ideas will help but we will need to understand the problem we are working on. We need to find ways of using your good ideas. We also need to accept that not all good ideas turn out to be good ideas! And what about other people?. Will others help you and if so why? We need to carefully consider our role in any problem situation. To what extent are we part of the problem? Problem solving is also a matter of judgement. We solve problems every day without giving them any special attention. Some problems we already have answers for. We will need to decide which problems to leave and which problems to work on. 1.1 Understanding the problem situation Having identified some concern, we need to make a decision whether to leave it for now, use a known response or accept that we have a problem that we need to do some work on. All of these have some merit and will reflect the way we deal with information flows throughout the day. Having been told that your car is dirty you may decide to leave it for now as you have more urgent things to do and think about it again later. You may know that your car is dirty but as you are in the habit of going to the car wash every Friday evening, know that this relatively minor issue will soon be resolved. The car being dirty could be a bigger problem if you have a potential buyer on the way and you want to give the impression of being a careful and caring owner. Leaving a problem can have merit. It may just go away. You may have feared redundancy for sometime, only to be reassured that your job was now safe or that promotion was possible within the new organisation. Leaving a problem could mean that you see it differently or that you get new information. There is a saying ‘we have lots of answers looking for questions’. We do need to build a range of skills and experience. Some problems we just know how to solve. Given the need to produce a cashflow forecast, you may have a spreadsheet model that you can easily adapt. You don’t need to invent an alternative to spreadsheet software or invent a completely new model. There is another saying that goes ‘What is originality? Undetected plagiarism’ (attributed to Dean Inge). The chances are that whatever solution you work with, it is not going to be completely original. Even if you were the first to climb Everest, you won’t have been the first to try and you won’t have been the first to climb a mountain.#p#分页标题#e# If you do decide that the problem is important enough to require a more thoughtful solution, then you need to consider the cost implications. Problem solution takes time (and managing time is always seen as a problem in its own right). Problem solution may require other resources like administrative support or product development. It is useful to think in terms of opportunity cost; that is what would you have otherwise achieved if your time and energy were used on the best alternative. We would not want to waste time thinking about the colour of the office walls if we were about to lose the office or the lateness of the ship if the ship were about to sink. The importance of a problem needs to be put into context. We may need to give problems a level of priority. We may need to see a problem as one of many and manage our won problem portfolio. However, finding time to think about problems is part of making a start - a simple checklist or undertaking a simple audit can help. Technique - checklist If you are not sure what to do, try a checklist. If you want to be sure that you don’t forget some important items of shopping when you go to your Supermarket or your passport when you go to the Airport the chances are you will use a list. A list allows you to collect your ideas, tick off as you make progress and add items if they are suddenly remembered.http://www.ukassignment.org/liuxuezuoyedaixie/daixiehelanzuoye/ The problem or problems you need to spend time on may have some or all of the following characteristics: Checklist tick If you can generate an appropriate list, it may well clarify the problem for you and for others. It can be a good team building exercise to generate a list to audit against. Whether you are looking to better understand an organisation or check the safety of a piece of machinery to work through a list can be helpful. Once you have a list, however, incomplete, it can always be improved. An anagram is a good way of making a tried and tested checklist memorable. In a first aid course, you are likely to be taught: • Danger – is there any What you do next will depend of what happens as you work through these stages. To help remember these stages the anagram Dr ABC is used.#p#分页标题#e# Gundy and Brown (2.) in their book Strategic Project Management give extensive checklists for managing strategic projects in: • organic business development Making progress can be about asking the right questions. The generalist checklists produced by others provide a good starting point but may not cover all the areas of interest to you. You may find the checklist provided by your holiday company helpful but it is unlikely to include all the things you will consider essential. Checklists will also date. You may get a reminder to take the sun cream but a number still fail to include a mobile or charger for a mobile. Technique - problem audit An audit generally refers to a check on business activities. It should ensure a correctness of business information. Coulter (2.) describes how an internal audit can be used to assess an organisations strengths and weaknesses. It is seen as similar to a financial audit but goes beyond just the financial aspects. You need to decide what to audit against. Coulter suggests auditing against the functions of the business, which are typically production-operations, marketing, research and development, financial and accounting, management (including human resource management) and information systems. The functions of an actual business may differ from those given and the audit would be adjusted accordingly. (You could also audit against the value chain). Here we develop the idea of the audit but apply it to any problem situation. Given that we are dealing with the problems that people have and that people want to solve, we would want to know from a problem audit: • Who is involved The other matters of importance tend to follow. The who and why can lead you to look at the financial systems or production or marketing. The importance of an audit is its completeness and acceptance. An audit will give you a statement of where you stand today – a position statement. It is a statement about what is known. An audit is not an assessment of potential or a forecast. An effective audit whether to do with financial matters or environmental is only painting a picture of the here and now. The wonderful thing, opportunity, about the future is the unknown. What you do now can make a difference. 1.2 What is a problem? It is going to be something that matters to you. The answers you get will of course depend on who you ask. The two important characteristics that generally emerge are that there is something unacceptable about the current situation (which we typically refer to as the problem situation) and there is an uncertainty about what to do next.#p#分页标题#e# A problem can be thought of usefully as a difference between where you are and where you want to be, and can be defined in terms of a gap. Definition (See Van Gundy) A problem can be thought of “as any situation in which a gap is perceived to exist between what is and what should be”. (3.) A problem is about perception. If you think something is wrong, then for you it is likely to be a problem. Problems are also about differences. If you want a mountain bike and have a mountain bike you don’t have a problem. If you want a new Porche and have a mountain bike then perhaps you do have a problem! Assertions are often seen as problems. Assertions make a statement but to be understood as problems, we need to know why they matter and to whom they matter. The weather being hot or cold, or business being fast or slow is only a problem if we are making some kind of comparison. The problems we shall be looking at are those where conditions (hot or cold weather) impact on people. Another useful way of defining a problem is given by Rickards (4.). Definition (See Rickards) “problems are what people have when they want something and don’t know how to get it” (p11) 1.2.1 Types of problem Richards identifies 5 types of problem (pages 11 to 13): 1. One right answer problems There are problems where a right answer will exist. These of course are a product of the question being asked. Given a particular mathematical ‘problem’ (or should we say question), we should get a right answer. The problems can be made more difficult but provided you know the methodology, the correct answer should eventually be found. If you ask about the number of years of service or the training provided, again you would expect a single correct answer. Rickards does suggest that these ‘one right answer problems’ are rarer than many would expect. You only have to change questions slightly, for the answers to become more complex. If you were to ask the more useful questions of what experience has been acquired during the years of service or what training is needed then the answer does become more difficult. Expecting ‘one right answer’ can, of course, be the cause of problems! Asking a simple question may provide a simple answer but may not explore the real issues. Perhaps we need to ask whether we are looking at the right mathematics question? Perhaps we need to assess the requirements of the business for skills, knowledge and training? Perhaps we need to ask a few ‘what if’ scenarios? At times, it is comforting to ask simple questions and get simple answers. To ask for the bus fare, being told the bus fare and finding that we have the right change might be all want. If this is all we do, then it can be a major block on our problem solving skills and our creativity. It all comes back to being a matter of what problems we want to work on. #p#分页标题#e# 2. Insight problems, or ‘aha’ problems There are lots of reported examples of that insightful moment when the answer just comes – the inspired discovery. It may just be a matter of making the right connections or realising that the answer was there all the time. It would be nice to have the luxury of waiting for this to happen. However, many real problems have an urgency about them. Solutions are expected. You are more likely to have an inspired moment (the eureka moment) if the conditions are right. We will be considering both blocks to creativity and the conditions where creative problem solving can thrive. 3. Wicked problems Rickards give a nice simple description of wicked problems as “ones for which the potential solution cannot be proved until the problem has been tackled”. (p 12) How can you know that a new route or a new recipe will work until you have tried it. It is useful to think of problem solving as a process. If the problem is complex, defies easy answers then we are unlikely to make one single step to the right answer. The answer might need to be worked on. There could be an element of ‘trial and error’. Mostly we can see a way forward and as we follow this we can assess whether it is working or not. It is also consistent with the views of ‘continuous improvement’ that we do not merely make a change and stop but continue to look for improved or better answers. Bryant usefully makes the distinction between tame and wicked problems: “tame problems are those which can be unambiguously stated and exhaustively formulated and which can be meaningfully isolated from their environment. By contrast, for wicked problems there is an irresoluble uncertainty over the appropriate level of description, no possibility of achieving a definitive formulation, and an absence of criteria for bounding the situation in either time of space.” (p 10) This simple dichotomy is helpful (and it is nice to talk about tame and wicked problems). The important thing to know is when you are dealing with a tame or wicked problem, and if the problem is wicked, how wicked. If we see a problem as tame, the chances are we will look for that ‘one right answer’. However, a tame looking problem may have wicked elements. It is not usual to see solutions in terms of (perhaps someone else) working harder. Getting people to work harder in some measurable sense, may mean a loss of motivation and the creative environment. 4. Vicious problems In these problems trying a solution can make the problem worse. These problems may appear to have an obvious answer. Telling children not to smoke may make the first cigarette more of a challenge. Introducing more management or more supervision may make a workforce more resentful and less motivated. #p#分页标题#e# Stacey distinguishes between vicious and virtuous circles. In a vicious circle, a well-intentioned intervention can make the situation worse. A simple email telling people to work harder may have the opposite effect. It could also make people resent the means of communication and the exertion of power within the organisation. In contrast, a virtuous circle will lead to a continuous improvement. Praise may lead to an improvement in work quality which in turn will give reason for further praise. 5. Fuzzy problems These are problems that are difficult to define and have no obvious route to solution. They are the types of problems that may leave you unclear as to whether you are dealing with an HR issue, a production issue or marketing issue. Wicked and vicious problems can also bee seen as fuzzy. Most problem situations will have elements of being fuzzy. Defining (and redefining) the problem you are going to work on will take away some of the fuzziness. Work on a ‘problem’ rather than a problem situation can help. Sometimes we need to accept the fuzziness and just work to make the problem situation better. Also, the aim might be to improve the problem solving capability of others, so that those in the problem situation become the problem solvers. 1.2.2 Problem structure Ackoff suggests that a problem has 5 types of component: 1. The person or people faced with the problem. He refers to the decision maker or makers. In this book, we refer more to problem ownership. The difference is mostly a matter of emphasis. Decision making generally has an organisational context – you take decisions in or for an organisation. Problem ownership is about the individual. The problem might be mine, or yours. It may have an impact on the organisation but that is not the primary reason for trying to solve it. 2. Those aspects of the problem situation the decision maker can control. These are referred to as controllable variables. A manager may be able to change the price or the level of advertising support. Vary such values can provide an answer or part of an answer. 3. Those aspects of the problem situation the decision maker cannot control. These are referred to as uncontrolled variables. A manager may be able to change the price or the level of advertising support for a particular product but not for other, competing products. A manager of a vehicle fleet can make decisions regarding routes but has to accept the cost of fuel as a given at a particular point in time. However, what may be an uncontrolled variable in one problem situation may be a controllable variable in another. When a business reviews its logistical operations, the means of transportation then becomes subject to a decision process – controllable. It can be useful to think in terms of the level of the problem and the time scale of the problem. As we move from the operational level to the strategic level, or as we move from the short-term to the long-term, variables that would be seen as fixed can become variable. Warehouse space may be fixed in the short-term but longer-term we can increase or decrease this. Longer-term and strategically we can question whether we want to use warehouse space in the same way. The introduction of a just-in-time system could mean that there would be less need for storage space.#p#分页标题#e# 4. Constraints. These are aspects of the problem situation that have to be accepted, like the organisation needing to work within the law or a decision needing the agreement of the immediate manager. It is often worth listing these constraints just to check that they are all really constraints. We can easily make assumptions about a problem situation that when challenged prove to be untrue. Working between nine and five or Monday to Saturday was often seen as a constraint but as we have seen in all kinds of organisations this has change. In fact we often now talk about working twenty four seven (all hours all week). One of the challenges of management is to change the constraints and management business differently. It was typically assumed in food retail, that the customer would go to the retailer but internet shopping has changed that and now food and other items can be taken to the customer. 5. Outcomes. The outcomes produced will be a result of the choice or choices made by the decision maker, and those things that are given, the uncontrolled variables. Sales achieved will be the outcome of decisions made on price and other factors (controllable variables) and conditions in the market place (decisions made by others).
A structured problem would be clearly described and the required outcome understood. Variables and constraints would be known. The solution might be difficult to achieve but it could be approached in a logical and systematic way. Build a brick wall there and take no more than 5 days would be a clearly understood problem. With sufficient resources, we could improve the chances of success. As with all problem solving we could fail. However, the nature of the task is clear and we could negotiate a solution. Unstructured problems have a vagueness, like we are beginning to feel insecure here or we are worried about our jobs. Variables and constraints are not really known to us. It is possible to sense the concern but more difficult to be precise about it. If feeling insure is the problem, should you build a wall, or employ more Security Guards or should you relocate? In an unstructured problem neither the means of the end are clear. This book is about those problems that have no clear answer. They may have elements of being wicked, vicious or fuzzy. They may be partly structured and partly unstructured. What is important, is the we improve our understanding of such problems and find ways to move forward. We might need to accept that some problems we never really solve. Can we ever say that we have the right product or service or level of quality? It might be that we have an answer now but will it last? 1.3 Models of problem solving In this book we start with a simple three-stage model: • understanding the problem situation#p#分页标题#e# The model used is a means to an end. We have a problem and we want a helpful and imaginative solution. If we can get there in three steps then that is fine. If we need to adapt or amend the model then that is also fine. Most problem solving approaches, involve an improved understanding of the problem situation. Is the problem what we think it is? Can we just work with the problem description that we have been given? There is evidence that we spend lots of time working on the wrong problem. We can also spend time working just on the symptoms on not the real cause of the problem. Having been told that sales are falling we might look at product promotion and pricing but the problem could be to do with distribution and perceived quality. If we think about the analogy of a medical examination, a doctor will look for symptoms like high temperature or pain but we not be looking just to solve these but will look for the underlying cause. Once we have an acceptable level of problem understanding, we need to think about the method of solution. The problem type might be familiar and we could use an existing approach. We may have a single idea and try to make that work. Most problem solving approaches will include a more creative, idea generation stage. Particularly in the competitive business environment, value is seen in doing it differently or better. Indeed it can be seen as a threat to the survival of a business, just using the same old answers. Brainstorming is typically seen as a way of generating lots of ideas. As we shall see, these ideas may be constrained by our current understandings of the problem situation (within the paradigm) or challenge the boundaries of our thinking (breaking the current paradigm). How we manage idea generation will make a difference. Ideas may just be variants of what we currently do (a typical outcome from brainstorming) or can be challenging and provocative. What you do, will depend on what you want to achieve. Having got lots of ideas it is then a matter of whether to use them or not. Most problem solving models, will look at techniques for idea selection and implementation. There are important decisions to make at this stage. Do we want to make changes? Will the changes make things better? Are the ideas good enough or do we need to repeat the problem understanding and idea generation stages? If we want to use a good idea, how should we do this? As already said, models are there to help us. If the model is not working, perhaps you need to change the model or just take what has value from the model. There is no one established model for problem solving or creative problem solving (often referred to as cps). What is important is making a start. You will often get the advice that making any start is better than doing nothing. Like any advice it can be helpful. Like any approach you might find exceptions to the rule. There is a view that creative problem solving is more about problem movement rather than problem solution. Just to understand the problem better might begin to offer a way forward.#p#分页标题#e# A good time to start fable. There must be a truth in the old adage that a journey starts with a single step. But should you know the destination before you make this start? The best journeys are likely to have some element of mystery. Make a start, it is often better to be moving than standing still. Techniques are there to help you. Try some. They might help extend the problem context, give even more ideas, effectively involve others in the problem solving process, allow a champion of a product or service emerge. Making a Start – more techniques Now is always a good time to make a start! Try understanding your problem situation in lots of different ways. There are always lots of different perspectives. You may want to see the problem as a parent, as a child, as an employer or as an employee. You may want an organisational perspective and see the problem in engineering, financial or marketing terms. This is a time to build up a different understand. Think about the number of ways you can describe a problem. You need to decide whether this is the problem situation you want to work on. If so, what kind of outcomes can you hope for? Play with you ideas. Try • dreaming {daydreaming}. What better way to view a new future than let your mind surface all those old hopes and wishes. A good daydream will bring to life lots of new and old characters; let them talk to you, they might have something worthwhile to say. 1.4 Conclusions In this chapter, we have considered ways of approaching a problem situation. In some cases, you may just accept a tried and tested answer. In other cases, the problem situation may not have sufficient significance to warrant the use of considerable time and energy. However, there will be problems that we want a better answer for. There will be problems that are challenges and will allow the development of our problem solving skills. In this chapter, we have seen that we can think about problems in different ways. We have seen that a simple model of problem solving (understanding the problem situation, generating ideas and selecting an idea or ideas that move you forward) provides a systematic method of dealing with the more complex problems. Try some of the techniques. Consider: do they work for you?#p#分页标题#e# Exercises 1. You have an important presentation to make tomorrow. You know what you want to say and you do know the material. How are you going to prepare for this? References Stacey Strategic Management and Organisational Dynamics |
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