Are You Solving the Right Problems? (via) My primary challenge is that I frequently work on the wrong things. I do that often enough I try not to invest a lot of time and energy into a path unless my teacher confirms it's the right one.

This great article from Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg explains how I can check I'm working on the right thing in a way that uses a reasonable amount of time. He emphasizes reasonable amount of time because many frameworks are so time-consuming they're only practical on the strategic level. The simpler frameworks tend to assume the first definition of the problem is the easiest and most effective to solve.

I think a great way to explain the value of their approach is the slow elevator problem. In it you are the owner of an old building with a major problem. Several tenants are threatening to break their lease if you don't reduce the wait time and make the elevator faster. Most people would recommend replacing the motor or even the elevator. That type of suggestion is what's called the solution space. A solution space is a group of suggestions that share a common assumption about the problem. On the other hand if you ask a building manager, they recommend putting up a set of mirrors by the elevator. It solves the problem because "people tend to lose track of time when given something utterly fascinating to look at—namely, themselves."

The mirror solution is particularly interesting because in fact it is not a solution to the stated problem: It doesn’t make the elevator faster. Instead it proposes a different understanding of the problem.

Note that the initial framing of the problem is not necessarily wrong. Installing a new lift would probably work. The point of reframing is not to find the “real” problem but, rather, to see if there is a better one to solve. In fact, the very idea that a single root problem exists may be misleading; problems are typically multicausal and can be addressed in many ways. The elevator issue, for example, could be reframed as a peak demand problem—too many people need the lift at the same time—leading to a solution that focuses on spreading out the demand, such as by staggering people’s lunch breaks.

I found their example about the number of dogs in shelters educational too.

Identifying a different aspect of the problem can sometimes deliver radical improvements—and even spark solutions to problems that have seemed intractable for decades. I recently saw this in action when studying an often overlooked problem in the pet industry: the number of dogs in shelters

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Lori Weise, the founder of Downtown Dog Rescue in Los Angeles, has demonstrated that adoption is not the only way to frame the problem. Weise is one of the pioneers of an approach that is currently spreading within the industry—the shelter intervention program. Rather than seek to get more dogs adopted, Weise tries to keep them with their original families so that they never enter shelters in the first place. It turns out that about 30% of the dogs that enter a shelter are “owner surrenders,” deliberately relinquished by their owners. In a volunteer-driven community united by a deep love of animals, those people have often been heavily criticized for heartlessly discarding their pets as if they were just another consumer good. To prevent dogs from ending up with such “bad” owners, many shelters, despite their chronic overpopulation, require potential adopters to undergo laborious background checks.

Weise has a different take. “Owner surrenders are not a people problem,” she says. “By and large, they are a poverty problem. These families love their dogs as much as we do, but they are also exceptionally poor. We’re talking about people who in some cases aren’t entirely sure how they will feed their kids at the end of the month. So when a new landlord suddenly demands a deposit to house the dog, they simply have no way to get the money. In other cases, the dog needs a $10 rabies shot, but the family has no access to a vet, or may be afraid to approach any kind of authority. Handing over their pet to a shelter is often the last option they believe they have.”

Weise started her program in April 2013, collaborating with a shelter in South Los Angeles. The idea is simple: Whenever a family comes in to hand over a pet, a staff member asks without judgment if the family would prefer to keep the pet. If the answer is yes, the staff member tries to help resolve the problem, drawing on his or her network and knowledge of the system.

Within the first year it was clear that the program was a remarkable success. In prior years Weise’s organization had spent an average of $85 per pet it helped. The new program brought that cost down to about $60 while keeping shelter space free for other animals in need. And, Weise told me, that was just the immediate impact: “The wider effect on the community is the real point. The program helps families learn problem solving, lets them know their rights and responsibilities, and teaches the community that help is available. It also shifted the industry’s perception of the pet owners: We found that when offered assistance, a full 75% of them actually wanted to keep their pets.”

I like Thomas identifies questions I didn't realize I needed to ask and answer them. For example I appreciate he explained there's no such thing as a single root cause. Instead there are generally multiple causes. Each of those individually could mitigate or even solve the problem.

As someone with autism I really appreciate how clearly Thomas breaks down how to implement his process. His anecdotes help me visualize how the processes are implemented.

The first part of the article is meant to explain the value of their process. The second part explains how you can use the process and the best way to.

• Establishing legitimacy is how you convince people to give the process a try. (Intuitively this feels like it should be somewhere else but the article put it here)
• Bringing outsiders into the discussion is beneficial because often the experts don't understand the problem nearly as well as the people experiencing it.
• Geting people’s definitions in writing tells you about subtle differences like whether people think the problem is employees not being engaged enough to innovate or the customers not paying for innovation.
• Asking what’s missing gives you the information you need to reframe the question.
• Considering multiple categories can tell you if you're considering enough types of causes of problems and if not which types you should.
• Analyzing positive exceptions can raise morale and are often an easier way to solve the problem than figuring it out from first principles.
• Questioning the objective is important because often the first way to solve a problem isn't the best way of achieving your goal.

Thomas explained the best way to use his process depending on the time you have.

The practices I outline here can be used in one of two ways, depending on how much control you have over the situation. One way is to methodically apply all seven to the problem. That can be done in about 30 minutes, and it has the benefit of familiarizing everyone with the method.

The other way is suitable when you don't control the situation and have to scale the method according to how much time is available. Perhaps a team member ambushes you in the hallway and you have only five minutes to help him or her rethink a problem. If so, simply select the one or two practices that seem most appropriate.

Five minutes may sound like too little time to even describe a problem, much less reframe it. But surprisingly, I have found that such short interventions are often sufficient to kick-start new thinking—and once in a while they can trigger an aha moment and radically shift your view of a problem. Proximity to your own problems can make it easy to get lost in the weeds, endlessly ruminating about why a colleague, a spouse, or your children won't listen. Sometimes all you need is someone to suggest, "Well, could the trouble be that you are bad at listening to them?"

Of course, not all problems are that simple. Often multiple rounds of reframing—interspersed with observation, conversation, and prototyping—are necessary. And in some cases reframing won't help at all. But you won't know which problems can benefit from being reframed until you try. Once you've mastered the five-minute version, you can apply reframing to pretty much any problem you face.

I wouldn't have realized that following a checklist tends to discourage productive thinking. I'd like to think I would've realized I needed to test things out in the real world too.

I really liked the examples and anecdotes because it helped me understand how the process could be used and how useful it is.