Posted on October 29, 2013March 19, 2018 by Mike Clayton

Creativity

This is part of an extended management course. You can dip into it, or follow the course from the start. If you do that, you may want a course notebook, for the exercises and any notes you want to make.

In last week’s Pocket Correspondence Course module, we looked at problem solving, using the Synectics process. The problem with all problem solving processes is the black hole in the middle:

That black hole is where a brilliant, innovative, creative idea happens.

Many, Many Approaches to Creativity

There are many approaches to stimulating this sort of creative idea, from bisociation to nyaka, from the Eureka method to Merlin. You will find all of these and more in The Creative Manager’s Pocketbook.

But there are two ‘master techniques’ that will serve a busy manager magnificently well. Let’s try them out. To do so, think of one or two problems for which you want to find a creative solution. Write them down in your notebook in the form:

‘I would like to discover how to…’

This is your ‘problem definition’.

Exercise 1: Sleep on it

Most creativity methods implicitly recognise that creativity happens while we are not looking. Given a problem, our brains will work on it at any time they have spare capacity. So the master technique creates that space by taking your mind off actively considering the problem – or anything else. Go for a walk, go out with friends or, better yet, take a nap. Best of all, write down your problem definition before you go to sleep at night.

The second stage to the process recognises that, when our brains are busy, ideas can’t find the room to get out. They tend to emerge either when something in our environment triggers them to emerge, because it bears some form of similarity, so the barrier is lowered, or in the spaces when our minds are still, like in the shower, walking to the bus stop, or drinking a coffee.

Since you cannot arrange the trigger event that lowers the barriers momentarily, create the quietening conditions that will let your idea emerge. Spend some time doing nothing that requires deliberate thought. Daydream, jot random thoughts onto a page, or sip a coffee or a tea, looking out of the window.

Constructive idleness is one of the two master techniques for creativity.

Exercise 2: Up and Down

Many creativity techniques are about breaking the mental constraints that we impose on our own thinking and finding a new way to look at the problem: so called ‘thinking outside the box’. Here, ‘the box’ represents your mental constraints.

The master technique for doing this is to start with your problem definition: ‘how to…’ and ask your self:

‘What is my reason for wanting to…?’

Keep asking this question of each answer (akin to the 5 Whys Technique) until the answer is both fundamental and self-evidently true. This is your ultimate purpose. Having gone ‘up’, now come back down, with the question:

‘How else can I achieve this purpose?’

Keep asking this to generate creative new options.

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Posted on October 22, 2013March 19, 2018 by Mike Clayton

The Synectics Problem Solving Process

As a manager, one of your responsibilities will be to solve problems. Set aside the small day-to-day problems you are constantly tackling: when you have a bigger,more challenging problem, how do you handle it? Do you have a process?

One process for structured problem solving – ideal for teams to use – is called Synectics. The methodology was developed observing many problem solving sessions by two Arthur D Little consultants, George Prince, Bill Gordon and their team in the 1950s. The story of its development is on the Synecticsworld website.

The process has nine steps:

1. Task Headline

Define the problem in the form ‘How to…’

2. Task Analysis

Set out why the problem exists, and its background, the oportunity before you and what you have already tried or thought of. If you have one, set out your ‘dream solution’, so that later, you can see if there are ways to break down the barriers to achieving it.

3. Springboards

Invite provocative statements and random ideas to set off creative thinking, like:

‘Why can’t we…’
‘I want to…’
‘If only we could…’
‘One idea might be to…’
‘With unlimited resources, we could…’

4. Selection

Select the most appealing ideas to emerge from the Springboard, to work on further. These may be practical, visionary or intriguing.

5. Ways and Means

Look for practical steps to develop selected ideas, and ways you may be able to implement them.

6. Emerging Idea

Allow one idea to emerge as the strongest potential solution.

7. Itemised Response

Evaluate the Emerging Idea, looking for ideas for how to make it work until you identify the best way forward, if the idea were finally chosen. Test out your level of satisfaction with the idea/implementation package: is this your possible solution?

If it is not, return to Step 6 and work with a new Emerging Idea.

8. Possible Solution

State and document the Possible Solution and the associated implementation approaches.

9. Next Step

Document the actions to be taken, by whom and to what deadlines?

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Posted on March 13, 2012March 19, 2018 by Mike Clayton

The DMAIC Solution Process

In last week’s Pocketblog, we took an overview of the Six Sigma approach to process improvement, and left readers with the statement: ‘it is time for the most interesting bit: the practical tools that non-experts can apply to making simple improvements from day to day.’

For all of the levels of certification that practitioners can acquire, most of us can simply understand and apply six sigma’s tools to day-to-day projects, problem-solving and improvements without training, just by understanding the basis and applying our own good sense and intuition. I am not arguing against the value of full training and certification, but it is a huge investment if all you want to do is fix a small issue.

Indeed, many of Six Sigma’s tools have a life of their own outside the methodology and have simply been co-opted in to provide strength in depth for practitioners’ toolkits. Next week, we’ll do a round-up of some of these. This week, we’ll focus on the beating heart of the Six Sigma methodology, the DMAIC Process.

The Beating Heart: DMAIC

DMAIC can be viewed as a problem solving process, but I prefer to think of it as a ‘solution process’ because it starts with defining the solution you need to find.

Let’s break it down:

Define

Define the solution you need, in terms of: who it affects (customers, clients, colleagues, stakeholders), the process involved, and the extent of the process (whether it is the full process or a part of the process). Choosing the right problem to solve is an important part of the Six Sigma process. It means making best use of necessarily limited resources. The Define stage ends with a team charter that sets out the scope and status of the project.

Measure

Six Sigma is nothing if not couched in mathematics and quantitative methods. This gives it its robustness. The second step in the DMAIC process is to measure the current performance level, to give a good baseline against which to evaluate improvement measures. This is a good opportunity to talk about Six Sigma’s Xs and Ys.

A Y is a measure of output performance. It is an effect of the process. Motorola talked of Big Ys as the things that matter most to the business’s most critical customers. The Measure stage of DMAIC concerns itself with Ys.

An X is is a cause – a factor, variable or process element which can affect the outcome. The Big Xs are the factor that have the greatest impact on Big Ys.

Analyse

Now it is time to find the cause of any failing in performance. At the Measure stage, we understood the performance (or Ys) – now we find what factors affect that performance (the Xs). Six Sigma has collated a host of quantitative and qualitative tools to gather data for the Measure stage and to interrogate it for the Analyse stage.

Improve

An effect Y is some function of one or more Xs so, in mathematical speak:

Y = f(X₁, X₂, X₃, …)

If you can understand what Xs are important and how to change them to improve Y, then you can implement valuable changes. Having a strong philosophy of quantitative, evidence-based interventions, Six Sigma practitioners will always look for opportunities to conduct limited (low risk) trials to test the validity of their evaluation before a full implementation.

Control

The final step is about evaluating and sustaining the improvements. Practitioners will set up a regime to monitor and control the relevant X factors and monitor the resultant Ys.

… and one more step?

In the UK, the Six Sigma Group (training and consultancy) advocates an extended DMAICT process that I would wholly endorse. Other organisations may, too. The final step is…

Transfer

DMAICT

Transfer what you have learned and the principles you have used to the operational staff who can then use this knowledge to maintain and further improve the processes. This is very much a step that is essential for external consultants to offer, if they want to avoid client-dependency. Of course, some consultants relish such a dependency, but transferring learning is more respectful, more sustainable and, ultimately I believe, more reputation-enhancing.

Learn More: References on the Web

The best website I have found, by far, is iSixSigma. It is a commercial site offering many related services, with free membership if you want additional information like newsletters. It has a lot of valuable articles and a Six Sigma dictionary.

MoreSteam.com is an online Six Sigma training business that also has a lot of freely accessible resources on its website. The link will take you to the Knowledge Center (US Site).

My third recommendation is DMAIC Tools – another site with a wide range of free resources to help you learn about aspects of Six Sigma. As its name suggests, this has a big focus on the tools and especially has a good coverage of the statistical side of the methodology.

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Posted on September 13, 2011March 19, 2018 by Mike Clayton

Going round in circles: Problem Solving Simplicity

There are some business books I refer to again and again. Often they are also (no coincidence) those that are recommended by many people I know as part of your essential business bookshelf.

For general negotiating skills, I am yet to be persuaded that any book has overtaken ‘Getting to Yes’ by Roger Fisher and William Ury. It is one of those books where ideas are densely packed and none are laboured. So despite being a short book, it has more in it than many twice its size.

The lowest review on Amazon UK gives it 3 stars – saying there’s not much new in it. A triumph for a book that is 30 years old and has therefore been imitated and borrowed from heavily over the years. I am fairly sure it was Ury and Fisher who first introduced negotiators to the BATNA.

Not about Negotiation

However, I am not writing this Pocketblog about negotiation and you can learn more in Patrick Forsyth’s excellent Negotiator’s Pocketbook (one of my personal favourites).

Sitting among the many gems in Getting to Yes (at page 70 of my 1986 hardback edition) is the circle chart. This is presented as a tool to help negotiators ‘invent options for mutual gain’. I see it as one of the best generic problem solving tools – and also, by the way, as a pretty good model for the consulting process.

The Circle Chart

What a wonderfully simple model for problem solving this is.

Problem
We ask what is wrong and gather the facts
Analysis
We diagnose the problem, seeking to understand causation
Approaches
We generate multiple options to resolve the problem
Action ideas
We evaluate the options and develop plans

All things are connected…

‘It’s the circle of life, Simba’

The Circle Chart has always reminded me how simplicity and robustness come from a few great insights, and the model-maker’s skill is in presenting them in new and relevant ways. In particular, this model is a close relative of another, designed for a very different purpose: Bernice McCarthy’s 4MAT method for instructional design.

Although the sequence is slightly different, the four questions that McCarthy argued that we need to answer are all here:

Problem – ‘what?’
Analysis – ‘why?’
Approaches – ‘how?’
Action ideas – ‘what if?’

So here’s the deal

The circle chart may not be the most sophisticated problem solving model available, but it covers all of the basis for me. A great resource for managers, project teams, consultants and trainers.

Some Management Pocketbooks you might enjoy

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Posted on April 6, 2010March 19, 2018 by Mike Clayton

Adapting and Innovating

Whether at work or at play, in a social setting or alone, we all have to solve problems. As soon as we frame something as ‘a problem’ however, we create a barrier for ourselves.

How do you go about solving a problem?

To be successful, we need to remove the barrier. We’ll look at a simple yet powerful way later. But let’s start with the question of how you solve a problem. Dr Michael Kirton identified a continuum of styles that people use, when tackling problems.

At one end of the spectrum is an Adaptive Style. People whose preference is towards this end like a structure within which to solve their problems. They will favour a formal problem solving process like the Eight Disciplines, the Simplex Method or DMAIC.

Adaptive Problem Solvers

Discipline and incrementalism characterise these problem solvers. They like to ‘do it by the book’ and avoid taking risks. They are less likely to find the radical solution, but also less likely to crash and burn with a way out solution that fails disastrously.

Radical solutions are more likely to be found by people who favour the Innovative end of the spectrum of styles.

Innovative Problem Solvers

Innovative problem solvers like risk, experimentation and radical solutions. A formal process will leave them feeling constrained and all they will want to do is subvert it. They will question anything and often do things differently just for the sake of it. Irreverence is their middle name!

Commonly, Adaptive problem solving goes along with careful attention to detail, whilst at the other end of the spectrum, an Innovative style shuns detail in favour of a wider view.

Creativity

Innovative problem solving often looks like ‘creativity’. This is perhaps a false equation. Styles across the whole spectrum can be creative; the continuum helps us understand the conditions that best foster that creativity for each of us.

The Best of Both Worlds

Is there a way of working on problems that can allow people who favour both Adaptive and Innovative styles to work together and thrive. Jonne Cesarani is an expert on helping stimulate creativity and his Problem Solving Pocketbook, may well hold the answer.

Throughout the book, Jonne makes good use of a very powerful approach to problem solving, called Synectics.

Developed from observation of what does and does not work in problem-solving groups, Synectics offers a clear nine-step process for solving problems that will certainly appeal to the Adaptive thinker in any of us.

But the way that it does so is to foster stages of controlled challenge and radicalism. It offers flexibility and a variety of tools that stimulate thinking in metaphorical, absurd and imaginary ways that will also appeal to the Innovative thinker in you.

The Nine Step Model

It is well worth checking out the nine step process, which Jonne sets out and documents extremely clearly. As a taster, there is Step 1.

Task Headline

This is an astonishingly simple way to overcome that barrier of ‘having a problem’. In Synectics, we start by re-writing our problem in the format:

‘How to …’

What this does is focus you, right from the start, on the solution, rather than the problem. Brilliant!

So here’s the deal

Don’t force a problem solving process on people with an Innovative style, but do offer one to people who are more Adaptive. For teams, favour an approach that allows members to combine a clear process with the freedom to subvert it.

Other Management Pocketbooks you may enjoy

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