What’s holding your business back from reaching its full potential? How can you uncover the real issues that need solving?
Richard Rumelt argues that the first step in problem-solving is thorough information gathering. By examining situations from multiple angles and making strategic comparisons, leaders can identify core issues that might otherwise remain hidden.
Read more to learn how to start any problem-solving process on the right foot.
The First Step in Problem-Solving
Rumelt writes that the first step in problem-solving is information gathering. To gather information about your broad issue, make a list of every aspect of that issue. That includes not only the challenges it involves but also the potential solutions and the opportunities your solutions might lead to. Seek input from your executive team and any employees who may have insight into the broad issue. These tactics will help you avoid the tunnel vision that causes you to focus only on the first few problems that you think of.
(Shortform note: You can use questioning techniques to help you gather information about your issue. In The Lean Startup, Eric Ries describes a technique for identifying a root problem by asking “Why?” five times in a row. When you encounter a problem, ask yourself why it occurred—then why that occurrence happened, and so on. This helps you move past the surface-level problems to uncover the underlying issue. Seeking input from your team and employees can help you discover these answers, but be careful to avoid assigning blame while you gather this information, as this can distract from the process and result in unhelpful scapegoating.)
Rumelt provides some specific tools you can use to gather information about your core problem. These include thinking about the situation from different perspectives and using comparisons.
Different Perspectives
According to Rumelt, strategists should look at the broad issue from different perspectives to reveal aspects of the issue that weren’t immediately obvious. It can also help you uncover underlying assumptions and biases you weren’t aware of, question the established way of doing things, and extend your thinking beyond current constraints and mental boundaries.
(Shortform note: In Thinking in Systems, Meadows explains specific ways your perspective on an issue can be constrained. These include focusing on events and linearities, ignoring limits and delays to progress, and failing to properly grasp or apply the knowledge about an issue. To avoid these pitfalls, she recommends looking for patterns in your organization’s performance over time and recognizing that changes often happen exponentially instead of linearly. She also advises that you address the most limiting factors in your issue and, if they can’t be addressed, accept them and work around them. And, like other experts, she warns against assigning blame and encourages you to focus on changing the system, not the people in the system.)
Rumelt says that, to take on a new perspective about your broad issue, you should consider the many different ways other people in different positions might view your situation. This includes stakeholders, employees at all levels, customers, outside analysts, and competitors. Any of these perspectives could provide you with a brand new insight that helps you crack your core problem.
For example, imagine a retail chain that’s struggling to maintain its customer base. Looking at the issue purely from the perspective of an executive, it may seem inexplicable. But, when the business asks frontline employees for input, they may discover that outdated inventory management is causing stock issues and lost sales. This perspective adds an essential insight to the business’s understanding of its overall broad issue and helps it zero in on the core problem.
(Shortform note: Being in a leadership position can limit your perspective on the issues your company is facing. In Extreme Ownership, Jocko Willink and Leif Babin explain that leaders only have a high-level view of what’s going on in the company, so they need to collaborate with people at all levels to get comprehensive information about the issue they’re trying to solve. This process also helps keep everyone in the loop about the issue and strategy you’re formulating, so lower-level executives and employees better understand the reasoning behind what you’re asking them to do.)
Comparisons
Rumelt also advises using comparisons to assess your core problem. He emphasizes that comparisons across industries, countries, or even seemingly unrelated fields can offer valuable insights into organizational issues. This broader scope of comparison can help identify inefficiencies, uncover hidden opportunities, and challenge long-held assumptions. By comparing situations or issues to similar cases in different contexts, strategists can recognize patterns that might not be apparent when they focus solely on their specific situation.
For example, a university with declining enrollment might compare its recruitment strategies to those of tech companies attracting top talent, inspiring new approaches to student outreach and program design.
Consider the following comparisons you could make:
- Compare your current situation to your organization’s history. How have you dealt with broad issues in the past? What tactics did you take with those broad issues? If they succeeded, why? If they failed, why?
- Compare your situation to a similar situation faced by a competitor. Someone in your field may have already faced similar broad issues; consider how they approached those issues and how successful they were in overcoming them.
- Compare your situation to an analogous situation faced by an organization in another industry. Comparisons with other industries can reveal practices or approaches that could be adapted to solve problems in your industry.
- Compare your situation to an analogous historical situation. Analogies to historical situations can provide insights into how similar issues have been addressed in the past and what outcomes resulted.
| The Drawbacks of Comparisons Rumelt’s practice of using comparisons to understand your core problem reflects the process of analogical reasoning, which is the ability to recognize and draw inferences between two things based on their similarities. It’s a crucial function in human cognition and, according to some scientists, is the most significant difference between human and animal cognition. However, it can have some drawbacks: Analogical reasoning is limited by your prior knowledge of the ideas you’re comparing, and it places a heavy cognitive load on the thinker. It can also lead you to overgeneralize your comparisons and assume that, because two things are similar in one way, they must also be similar in other ways. Make sure the comparisons you’re using to identify your core problem are accurate and that you understand both of the things you’re comparing well. Additionally, keep in mind that analogies aren’t perfect, nor are they conclusive proof of the idea you’re considering. In using the specific comparisons Rumelt recommends, keep the following in mind: • While your current situation may reflect a similar problem in your organization’s history, remember that the factors involved have likely changed over time, especially if the past situation occurred a long time ago. • You may have a similar problem to one your competitor has faced, but your competitor is a different entity with distinct needs, abilities, and resources. • Comparisons across industries may be especially risky because of the differences not only between your respective companies but also between the environments in which you’re operating. • Comparisons to historical situations can be problematic if you don’t have a comprehensive understanding of the event and its context, and it’s possible that the information you do have about it could be faulty. |
