Return to Reason - Essential Problem Solving

Introduction

Essentially, problem solving improves life - personal life, business life and society at large. It is so intertwined with the fabric of life, philosopher Karl Popper (1902-1994) declared:

“All life is problem solving”.

As you solve problems you grow. How you navigate through your problems defines your character and shapes your future. The optimist sees opportunity in every problem and as Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965) puts it,

“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”

From the beginning, man has been a perennial problem solver as his every invention would testify.

Survival needed problem solving, often against odds. From fire through stone tools to wheels, the inventive journey marked endless problem solving. It was sheer innovation. Now it is known as pursuit of excellence.

An enduring lesson from centuries of problem solving: begin the regime with commonsense. In the wake of cycles of rise and fall of tools, the core has imploded to common sense and reason, the driving force. The effectiveness of Scientific Methods rely heavily on the way they are put to use, simply because tools can be used or misused. Tools need a human agent who would use them intelligently to produce results.

After fifty years of Six Sigma, it profits to revisit basic problem solving for fresh air.

Missed Hypotheses

Hypothesis testing, much acclaimed and intended to foster scientific approach, fails when there is no hypothesis. The statistical procedure is meaningless without a hypothesis, or, a common sense based theory. Tests must be used in a confirmatory mode, to confirm a theory, not to generate a theory.

Leaving behind reason, some problem solvers have turned unduly and overly empirical; they do not stop to postulate theories, but instead immerse into data and search for theories, in vain. What has failed is not the scientific method, but the way it has been understood and deployed. This type of problem solving is a pseudo-science. Mindlessly, clinics conduct tests after tests, groping in the dark, hoping to get pointers, escalating the cost of solution, but more seriously, not getting anywhere till luck befalls. Such problem solvers fail to achieve direction first, before the journey starts; they find direction much later in the journey by means of costly iterations and painful detours. Such frenetic attempts lack cogency and risk delay and failure.

Medical Anecdotes

Medical procedure follows the problem solving cycle: recognition, definition, analysis, solution design and implementation. Mistakes can happen in any of these steps. Medical error is a top killer, after heart disease and cancer.

There was a time doctors read pulses and decided. Today they ask for CT scans for understanding simple problems. Without scans they seem to be lost. Over diagnosis is an overkill; it costs. Wrong diagnosis, apparently growing by the day – an indicator that medical organizations are not learning from mistakes - is even worse.

“Medical mistakes cause 2.6 million deaths and leave 138 million patients harmed every year.” – WHO

Finding alternate solutions, if necessary from alternate medical systems, makes sense. I was enthralled when nature cure offered me a zero cost solution as an alternative to an expensive spine surgery over ankle pain. It saved me INR 400000 and four months of postoperative care, not to mention career loss and inconveniences to my family, friends and relatives.

Problem Solving Tools

Problem solving tools were branded and popularized in Japan as 7 QC Tools, which are really simplified version of the western Statistical Control methods. Gopal Kanji published a collection of tools as a “Hundred TQM Methods”. The list swelled with time. Statistical methods enjoyed a niche among the tools. Ninety plus statistical functions in Excel made inroads into problem solving. Data Science launched a thousand plus algorithms.

In spite of the explosion in statistical tools, mind tools such as critical thinking, mind mapping, Pareto analysis and root cause analysis enjoyed an invincible special place.

However tools bear the risk of biasing the user. As the American Psychologist Abraham Maslow (1908 - 1970) observed,

“If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” 

It is a knotty fact that Industrial Engineers, and Six Sigma Black Belts ended up learning more tools than they could very use. Seasoned problem solvers prefer simple tools.

The industry is successful in automating several statistical procedures but not so successful in automating problem solving. Except in the case of robots that can be taught to solve known problems. When it comes to that, known problems with known solutions are not really problems, they are merely incidents.

Will Power

When the chips are down, problem solving hinges on the mind. Sharpen it, mind is the limit.

"You have powers you never dreamed of. You can do things you never thought you could do. There are no limitations in what you can do except the limitations of your own mind." -- Darwin P. Kingsley

A positive attitude wins problem solving.

"If you believe you can, you probably can. If you believe you won't, you most assuredly won't. Belief is the ignition switch that gets you off the launching pad." -- Denis Waitley

During the topsy-turvy travel into problem solving it is common to come across moments of despair that urge you to stop and go back. Many problem solving projects have been abandoned in this manner. Success might have been inches away but we are not to know. We tend to forget “Success is closer to you than you think” It requires perseverance, self-confidence and an indomitable spirit to solve seemingly impossible problems.

The Subconscious

Problems solvers let the subconscious mind provide surprise insights. Stories abound about how inventors were helped by dreams such as in the discovery of Benzene molecular structure, the periodic table and invention of the sewing machine. The greatest problem solver is the subconscious mind. To prime it, you have to distract yourself from the problem: leave the problem, go for a drive, take a walk, have a bath, sleep. Leave it to the subconscious, it can process 500000 times more information than the conscious mind. And then inexplicably, without warning, the solution pops up. Neuroscientists are exploring the miraculous contribution of the inner mind in problem solving. New theories are being proposed.

Tapping into the subconscious mind requires a deep understanding and internalization of the problem. Mechanical or superficial engagement won’t help where conscious solutions are not enough.

In certain moments during problem solving our minds get cluttered with opinions, strategies, plans and data, hindering vision. That is the moment to let go and relax.

“Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone,”- Alan Watts

Problem Solving Landscape

Problem solving is inherent in quality movements. In the last hundred years quality gurus launched different ideologies with different flavors which had one common element: problem solving. Problem solving in the west was PDSA (Plan-Do-Study-Act) with Statistical Process Control, and, in the east Quality Circles with 7 QC Tools. The eastern approach is a simplified and humanized version of the western thinking, after all the western gurus taught the eastern gurus.

It was also agreed, problem solving is the core of quality improvement. Problem solving frameworks, as practiced under the influence of gurus, were cultural products and changed according to the parent culture. The problem solving culture in the west began with Taylor’s (1856 – 1915) scientific approach, who famously collected data to improve cycle time. Ford propounded his path breaking CANDO to improve work in the production floor. The improvement wheel, the immortal PDSA, developed by the duo Walter A. Shewhart (1891 – 1967), a physicist, and his protégé W. Edwards Deming (1900 – 1993), an engineer- statistician, served as the quintessential model for problem solving that inspired generations worldwide.

Japan learned from Deming, internalized his ideas, blended them with home culture and brought forth a powerful way to solve problems: Quality circles. Kaoru Ishikawa (1915 – 1989), equipped Quality Circles with 7 QC Tools, a brilliant adaptation of the western SPC, the first ever problem solving tool kit. Juran (1904 – 2008) acknowledged that the people centric approach achieved which Taylorism could not. 

While Deming, Juran, Crosby and Feigenbaum developed different, even conflicting, quality management theories, the essential problem solving did not change.

In different platforms, in Russia TRIZ was created and in Israel Critical Chain was proposed.

In the digital era machines have started participating in problem solving. They are taught - programmed - to solve known problems with known solutions. Artificial intelligence is used, for instance in diagnostics, robotic surgery and self-driven cars.

Problem solving is applied to managing risks and disasters. Risks - anticipated problems – are softballs that can be handled using soft, strategic, low cost measures. Disasters – occurred problems and crises – call for no holds barred, desperate measures and emergency procedures. Both are responses to problems, though in different timing.

Industry Adaptations

When industry adapted problem solving, its structure hinged as much on the business problem as on the business culture. Companies, Ford, Motorola, Allied Signal, GE, Boeing and Toyota, built their own brands of problem solving structures that served under bigger banners: Quality, Productivity, Cycle Time Reduction and Cost Saving. The well-established DMAIC, and its tentative sequel DFSS, an improvised inheritance from traditional Research Methodology, and their variants, overarched business enterprises.

Lean system competed and soon dominated the DMAIC family, leading to the creation of Lean Six Sigma, a purported commercial blend of the two systems.

On the one hand, the focus shifted to solving Design problems before they become hardwired into the product. Finding and fixing problems in the design stages is cheaper. If found in the later stages, the cost of defects escalates exponentially. Making designers, who invariably are bright and creative, subscribe to problem solving methods is tricky. Commercial DFSS failed since designers need a more profound, more scientific and more sensitive perspective of design problems. NPD, the all-inclusive umbrella, and Design Thinking superseded DFSS.

On the other hand, computer methods revolutionized data collection and analysis with the birth of Data Science which emerged as an independent power; its larger contribution to problem solving is eclipsed by its commercial success in detecting anomalies and pattern recognition.

On Defining the Problem

A historic concern: people sometimes work on the wrong problem. Problem recognition and selection hold the key to success.

“It isn’t that they cannot find the solution. It is that they cannot see the problem.” – G.K Chesterton

An estimated 40,000 to 80,000 deaths occur each year in U.S. hospitals related to misdiagnosis, and an estimated 12 million Americans suffer a diagnostic error each year in a primary care setting—33% of which result in serious or permanent damage or death.

Once a problem is recognized, it must be well defined.

“A problem well put is half solved.” ― John Dewey

Whatever be your preference, eastern or western, problem solving begins with problem definition, by far the most critical and decisive step.

Einstein said, dramatically,

“If I had an hour to solve a problem I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions.” He believed that “The formulation of the problem is often more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill.”

Crossing Mental Barriers

Problem solvers are fighters; they have to overcome several mental barriers while solving problems. The first problem is the mind. You must believe in yourself. In moments of dismay, when solution seems beyond the horizon, you must forge ahead with hope. Beware, before technology fails your mind may fail. Edison experimented with, showing incredible tenacity, hundreds of filaments for his electric lamp before hitting on the right composite. Lesser men would have lost interest long ago.

“Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.” ―Dale Carnegie

 “Winners never quit, and quitters never win.” ―Vince Lombardi

Industries created Tiger Teams and Black belts as evangelists of this fighting spirit, which is more needed than knowledge or data. It is all in the mind.

“I do not fix problems. I fix my thinking. Then problems fix themselves.” – Louise L.Hay

The Lean Lens

Lean began at Ford in 1920 in its assembly lines and as well in the philosophy of CANDO (Cleaning up, Arranging, Neatness, Discipline and ‘Ongoing Improvement’). Ford expressed the Lean Thinking when he said,

“We cannot afford to have dirt around— it is too expensive.”

Two industrial engineers in Japan, Taiichi Ohno (1912 – 1990) and Shigeo Shingo (1909 - 1990), adapted Ford and created Toyoto Production System in 1930’s which was christened Lean in 1988 by Krafcik. Also Japan adapted CANDO as 5S.

In a stroke of remarkable simplicity, Lean focused on two problems: waste and flow. Solving these two, maybe in stages, brought excellence.

Goldratt echoed Lean thinking when he advocated “focus” on just one problem, the bottleneck. He also advocated speed, finishing work as soon as possible, and insisted eradication of waiting time, pretty much like runners do in a relay race.

Juran popularised the 80/20 rule, which urged the problem solver to focus on the vital few problems.

Resonances appeared in software development in the form of Agile.

Lean dismantled rigor, as Mazaki Imai, author of Kaizen, says,

“Don't wait for the perfect solution.”

Lean relies on idea collection as in the concept,

“Seek the wisdom of ten people rather than the knowledge of one,”

and not so much in Taylor’s data collection.

Breaking the Problem

There is no such thing as the big problem. Every big problem can be broken into small problems that are more manageable.

French philosopher Rene Descartes (1596-1650) advised:

“Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it.”

Continuous improvement champions believe in this. They prefer small improvement cycles called Kaizen to breakthrough improvements. TQM relies on Kaizen to make quality a companywide program.

In reality small problems with time grow into big ones. Laoji said,

“Face the simple fact before it becomes involved. Solve the small problem before it becomes big.”         

From a risk management angle, detect and solve the problem when it is technically a soft risk. Do not allow a soft problem harden into a crisis.     

Doing              

A problem solving culture shows a

bias for action,

as Tom Peters notes in “In Search of Excellence.”

This trait is articulated by Samuel Beckett,

“No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

Problem solving culture is tenacious and finds a way out when there seems to be no option while commercial initiatives quickly take U turns.

Organizations, the upper management in particular, can get lethargic and fail to take timely action. In Beirut explosives were stocked in port for seven years in spite of repeated alerts and warnings to shift them to safer places till the pile exploded and killed 253 people and made 300000 people homeless. The problem was bureaucrats and judges went into comatose mode. So was the case of fatal failures of NASA O rings and Toyota air bags. The whistleblowers, from lower levels, were ignored and their warnings were buried and administration chose inaction.

When it comes to problem solving, there are only two types of people, spectators and players. For problem solving be a player. Do something about the problem. The recent trend of reporting problems, due to the rise of media culture, instead of solving them is of great concern: a case in point is how a photographer instead of saving a dying famine struck child, eyed by a vulture, took the photo and published it to win a Pulitzer Prize.

Problem Solving Culture

The ultimate success is in building a problem solving culture in the organization which can guarantee quality and reliability to customers. Series of testing and quality control checks cannot give the guarantees which a culture can. A setback in installing a problem solving culture is the ability to see problems. Many do not like to see problems. Some go into problem denial. When seniors close their eyes on problems that rings a knell on problem solving culture; no one wants to solve non existing problems.

CAPA, Corrective and Preventive Action, is a good way to respond to problems. Corrective action involves the ability to change the old way and adopt a new way of doing things. Preventive action involves the ability to learn from mistakes, carry the knowledge forward to do things better, right first time. Responding to problems, rather than being onlookers, is a cultural trait involving sensitivity and empathy.

In business, such a culture is driven by customer complaints which are problems that need to be solved for survival. Companies strive, with varying success rates, to make teams find and fix problems before customers report. Eventually it funnels into a self-discipline of seeing and correcting problems before others see them. A step ahead, it means preventing problems and good CAPA habits.

When problems are prevented by habit a true problem solving culture is born. Isolated problem solving events, competitions, programs do not constitute culture. What is needed is a reprise of problem solving again and again. People must feel happy to solve problems. We need to cultivate a natural interest in fixing problems.

A good doctor, with a problem solving culture, does not match his treatment to the paying capacity of the patient. He has one uncompromising task: solve the health problem and save the patient.

Finally, program driven problem solving initiatives reflect the motivation from leaders. Culture driven problem solving is self-driven and leads to sustainable progress.

The world needs a rebirth of the problem solving culture.

Denouement

After all we believe in ’Just do it”. Still it is good to have a collection problems solving methods and frameworks in the library. We can pick and choose the best suited approach from the library, without being chained to any single track, in a postmodern way. We are inclusive.

We believe in speedy solutions and distrust and abandon slower tracks. We believe in low cost solutions and reject costly solutions that are likely to be suboptimal and often wrong. We use common sense to guide and control the problem solving path.