The spice of life (for us engineers, anyhow) is being able to successfully overcome obstacles and see them shrink away in our rear-view mirror. New challenges are thrown our way every day. So how do you systematically organize, prioritize, and resolve these pesky problems in a collaborative manner? What tools are in your own personal toolbox for this task? I’ve come across a few that are remarkably practical and, dare I say, fun. You may already be familiar with them. If you are of a mind to standardize your solutioning process, you might want to take a closer look.
Before we get too deep, I want to be sure we’re all on the same page. It’s not uncommon to talk right past people because we have neglected to fully define the problem, the vague concern, or even the goal sufficiently. Effective group think requires it. Therefore, take a moment at the onset to discuss the issue at hand with the team until you’re content that all parties are fully up to speed. Come armed with measurements. Your gut is unreliable in these situations. Measurements give you objective insight into your challenge; instincts do not.
If you have actual measurements and data from which to draw, the best and simplest means of organizing it visually is the Pareto chart. The beauty of the Pareto chart is that it immediately (and intuitively) helps us prioritize our effort. There’s no reason to invest tons of mental or physical energy (or money, by the way) in problems that are in the trivial end of the pool. Focus on the frequent ones instead and get the best bang for the buck. Incidentally, some people will advise you to take it a step further and only focus on the best of the best – the top 20% of the top 20%; that’s the elite stuff in the top 4%.
Now you might be saying, “that’s great for you. You have data. But what about my R&D project or the lofty BHAG that has us in unchartered territory?” Well I have a tool for that as well. Goal Trees are designed for that very environment. I love Goal Trees. Nothing could be more straight-forward.
A Goal Tree is simply a decomposition technique that allows you to state a goal, determine its level of acceptability as of today, and then define what other related goals need to come together to move the needle on the primary goal. There’s no brain surgery here. Let’s say you have a goal to generate $2 million/year in continuous improvement savings, but the current performance of the program is only $1 million/year. Use sticky-notes on the wall to represent these goals. Green means the goal is being achieved satisfactorily. Yellow indicates that success on this goal is only marginal and it needs improvement. A red sticky note indicates an unacceptable level of success for a goal.
For our hypothetical write “$2M/year in CI savings” on a red note and stick it to the wall. Under it we will add additional sticky notes that reveal any related or dependent goals, denoting success or failure by its color. Under the initial note we might add a red note that says “10% of middle managers trained in CI tools”, a yellow note next to it that says “3:1 ratio of projects to coaches”, and a green note that reads “engaged executive support.” Now each of these tier 2 goals can be decomposed into several tier 3 support goals and so on. Get the picture? Effort needs to be applied to deal with the red topics first. Just like using Pareto, we’ve weeded out the good stuff to better focus on the great stuff for the best possible outcome. I highly endorse Goal Trees at all levels.
Our growing assortment of tools has now clarified which problems have the highest priority. Great. I would suggest now that we take a step back and filter one more time based on the vision of your organization. I would expect that several of these issues simply don’t qualify for space on your radar considering the mission or aspirations of your company. If you are familiar with the Jim Collins books (I personally love them) you might recognize the Hedgehog principle: the one truly differentiating aspect of your business that no one else can rival. These are the areas where problems deserve swift, decisive, and merciless resolution. Preserve your Hedgehog with extreme prejudice, and don’t necessarily sweat the other stuff. The point is to employ another filtering step that highlights the issues central to your organization first. These are items worth dealing with and all others are debatable. There’s only so much budget, energy, and enthusiasm to go around. Use it wisely.
There’s more than one way to skin a cat, right? We’ve all heard it said and it bears repeating. There are a multitude of solutions for any given problem, however we need to stay focused on finding the best of the best that are well-aligned with the organization’s vision, the least costly, and most rewarding. To this end I want to encourage you to take a VERY INCLUSIVE approach to solution ideation. Group outcomes nearly always outperform personal ones. No one corners the market on good ideas, so involve many.
So what do you do with this multitude of solutions? How best do I sort and prioritize these options? Several tools come to mind but I want to introduce you to my all-time favorite: the Seven Alternatives. It’s a simple yet powerful variation to the traditional Pugh Matrix. The Seven Alternatives helps you do pair-wise comparisons of solutions to whatever unsatisfying solution that is being used today. The question you ask is, for each alternative method/design/embodiment we’ve dreamed up, how does it compare with our current one. Your current approach is listed in the first column. Each alternative is listed to the right of it in their own column.
Now conceive of criteria for evaluation for each row. Common ones include: cost of implementation, time to complete, ease of operation, feedback from customers, and impact on reliability. The more the better. I usually shoot for at least a dozen and often group them by Cost, Quality, Delivery, Safety, and other. These scores can also be weighted, but resist weights on the first pass because cost typically gets dramatically over-weighted and distorts your results. I often insert multiple evaluation factors related to cost in my criteria to avoid the need for weights.
Your baseline column is neutral, therefore no scores are needed in that column. Conduct a pair-wise evaluation between each alternative and the baseline for each criteria. Your scores will typically be subjective, but very insightful. The scores will either be positive, negative or unknown/no-difference. If you choose, you can have up to two degrees of positive or negative, but keep it simple. I personally like the idea of “slightly beneficial” and “wow” in my scoring. Scoring ought to be done as a group using the same participants that generated the alternatives in the first place. The discussion will be rich and productive.
Sum the scores at the bottom of each column and clearly superior solutions will become immediately evident. Often the most attractive solutions will also be the most ambitious or risky. This is where management needs to be involved for guidance when things get sticky.
You might be pondering why they landed on seven as the magic number for alternative options. The Japanese realized that we usually jump too quickly to a single solution and need to broaden our thinking to consider more possibilities. Also, it’s often the case that the most effective countermeasures are combinations of other solutions in part or in whole. Get these out in the open to be vetted and considered. It can sometimes seem unreasonable to demand seven alternatives, but the discipline to stretch your perspective will be advantageous in the long-term, in much the same way as the 5-Whys technique. Don’t settle for mediocre when a little stretching can bring about something appreciably better.
Sifting through your challenges to decide which ones to focus on doesn’t have to be such a burden. Nor does the task of formulating the most appropriate solution for these challenges. Give these tools a try and you may find that the process can be more of an adventure and less of a chore.
Lean In and Lean On.