Car breakdown? Internet not working? Boss or spouse
upset? Garbage everywhere? Long commute times? Corruption? Poverty? Everyday,
we experience problems at different levels and of varied complexity. Some, like
car problem, appear solvable, some like, commute time appear more difficult to
solve and some others like corruption / poverty appear hopeless. Nevertheless,
problem solving has fascinated mankind for centuries. From Francis Bacon who
championed inductive methods to Buddha who championed meditative methods
various people have proposed different approaches to solve problems. Here is an
attempt to classify these approaches into 4 categories – system centric,
problem centric, solution centric and solver centric approach. I will argue at
the end that as human dimension associated with the situation gets more
complex, we need to use more of solution and solver centric approaches.
To simplify things, I have considered the process of
going from problem definition to hypothesis generation (or solution creation).
And hence, I have kept the steps of problem definition and the hypothesis
validation (experimentation) out of scope. Most of the times, problem solving
is an iterative process where problem (re-) definition, solution creation and
experimentation get repeated until one is satisfied. Thomas Edison epitomized
this method by running tens of thousands of experiments to get his light bulb right.
Four approaches to problem solving:
System
centric: Tata Nano is the result of questioning the position,
material and various properties of car’s components. For example, engine’s
position has moved back from front. Plastic was given a serious consideration as
a body material before abandoning it because it didn’t fit in the budget. In the
early stages of conceptualization the role of doors was questioned. In the systemic centric approach, a system is
looked upon as a combination of various sub-systems. And then the arrangement
of sub-systems (and its sub-systems) gets questioned and changed to meet
certain constraints like cost, performance etc. TRIZ methodology and its
variants like Systematic
Inventive Thinking (SIT) are examples of system centric approaches. For
further study, SIT’s five
thinking tools (subtraction, multiplication, division, task unification and
attribute dependency) is a good place to start.
Problem
centric: Malaria has been one of the deadliest diseases for
mankind. It may have contributed
to the decline of Roman Empire. However, once it was known that it is
spread through mosquitoes, its arrest became easier. Bed nets and insect
repellents are low cost and yet effective measures to reduce the risk of
malaria. Root Cause Analysis helps us find the root cause of the problem and
then address it. Techniques like fishbone or Ishikawa diagrams and asking
five-why’s have been developed to help analyse root causes. This site shows how
root cause analysis is applied to various famous failures in various industries
like aviation, healthcare, business, environmental, legal etc. For example, this article
presents the application of repeated “Why” questioning to arrive at root
cause(s) of devastation due to Hurricane Katrina.
Solution
centric: By the time Gyanesh Pandey realized
that Jatropha based biodiesels based approach won’t be a viable approach, he
had already spent significant portion of his pension fund and five years in
iterative experimentation. He was struggling to hold on to his dream of electrifying
rural India and had run out of ideas. In a chance meeting, he came across a gasifier
based electrification technology being used in forty villages in Bihar. He
spent a month-and-a-half at one of the plant studying it and improved it
further. This led to Husk Power Systems, a venture Gyanesh co-founded that
sells gasifier based power generators that supply electricity several off-grid
villages in North East India. Note that Gyanesh’s breakthrough happened when he
looked at a solution rather than the root cause of the problem. Hence this
approach is called solution centric approach.
As the social system becomes large and complex (like rural
India), it becomes more difficult to do root-cause analysis. Nassim Taleb calls
such systems high causal density systems. The number of variables which are
affecting the system is very high – perhaps thousands, perhaps millions. Hence,
to solve a problem, it makes more sense to start with “what is already working
in the same setting” (a solution). These are referred to as “bright spots”. The
idea is to focus on scalable bright spots. The psychotherapy method called Solution Focused
Brief Therapy (SFBT) focuses on bright spots as a starting point.
Similarly, an approach called Positive Deviance advocates
solving social problems by scaling bright spots. Chip & Dan Heath advocate “Follow
bright spot” approach in their book “Switch: How to change things when change is hard”.
Metaphor (or analogy) is another powerful solution
centric method of solving problems. A metaphor tries to create an equivalence
between two seemingly disconnected concepts by asking, “Why can’t this be more
like that?” For example, McDonalds and an eye hospital (Aravind Eye Care), moon
and apple (Newton & gravity), water in the tub and water in the stream
(Hellen Keller’s first breakthrough concept) etc.
Solver
centric: In 1993 when Dr. Kiran Bedi became IG(Prison) of Tihar
Jail, she asked an interesting
question – Why can’t a jail be more like an
ashram – a spiritual retreat for prisoners? Soon, an experiment was
conducted in which 96 inmates and 23 jail staff participated in a 10-day Vipassana
meditation course conducted within the jail premises. It was a success and
since then it has become a regular practice at Tihar. Moreover, it has been introduced
in other prisons in India and abroad.
What has meditation got to do with problem solving? A
reason why a jail term may not reform a convict because the thought patterns
which lead to a wrong-doing are stuck deep inside the mind. Similarly, we are
not able to solve a problem because cobwebs of judgments / desire / fear prevent
us from seeing the world as it is. The same tape of complaints and labelling is
getting played again and again inside our heads most of the time. The only way
out is to see clearly the futility of this wasteful involuntary compulsive thinking.
All meditation approaches are intended to get one’s attention away from this
compulsive thinking. Hence, meditative approaches are solver centric
approaches. A practice like dialogue championed by people like David Bohm, Peter Senge and Edgar
Schein is also an example of solver centric approach. In a dialogue, the
emphasis is placed in clarifying one’s own assumption rather than judging
others’ comments.