Managing Problems Creatively: Methods and Frameworks

Here the look goes into the overall methods and frameworks within which techniques can be deployed. In general you are working to come from confusion to clarity. This can just happen because you let it, you can make it happen or you can help it happen. It’s hard to classify the different methods that can be used because they are evolving. All this goes back to Socrates (400BC). Slowly ideas were written down and with it problem solving techniques. Now lots of the techniques have matured. Some are even old and might be replaced or improved.

A little look at history follows as the methods emerge. In the 30s to 50s Alex Osborn and William J.J. Gordon introduced the idea of brainstorming, splitting up fact-finding, idea-finding and solution-finding. System thinkers were also starting at the same time, and they saw problem solving as a technical and rational process: define, identify, develop, analyse and recommend. Overall, both where saying that you need to clarify the problem, then think up possibilities and go to selecting the best.

In the 60s and 70s we were moving on. The real problems were wicked. Since you can’t agree on the problem, the above methods stop to work. One option was to tweak the old method, with lots of itterations, entry and exit points, generating problems from answers and in general diverging and converging in lots and lots of phases. There is a good and long figure on page 133 about this.

At this time, Synectics was born, which talked about opening up the problem to find numerous solutions, through springboards for example.

Colin Eden’s SODA even went one step further, not only avoiding the problem definition but also avoiding the need for ideas. Just create a map that everyone agrees with, and then go from there. Causal mapping is something you can use here.

Mason and Mitroff’s Dialectical approaches are another option, which is about going into discussion in a controlled way with a clear thesis and antithesis. You need to be aware to manage the conflict and have a good antithesis though for this to work well.

Checkland’s soft systems method (SSM) is about orchestrating debate, as teh book puts it. Here you just take more alternatives than with Dialectics, which is about two people discussing it.

Friend and Hickling’s strategic choice approach is about mapping all the options, seeing uncertainties, removing the immpossible ones and continuing this to choose.

Next to looking for the problem, facilitation was a real concern. You can either get a person that knows what she is doing or make the methods easy enough to do. Nominal Group Technique (NGT) and Brainwriting are easy enough to use methods for example.

Also important: incorporating the non-rational : This got growing attention, with logic being seen as a special way of thinking. This became more acceptable as a view point in the 60s and 70s. The intuitive was more plausible, but was still routed in the clarify, think, select approach. But maybe the solution was already inside you. Emotional intelligence (Goleman) is important in this respect.

Some techniques here are NLP for example, neuro-linguistic programming. It helps you to become more skilled at reading yourself.

Maturity and the Future

The 80s and 90s can be called maturity. Here we are repackaging and finding new paradigms. Methods are put together to form new things, adapted to special areas, software used to improve them or exploit them. The role of IT and more importance of other kinds of thinking need to be mentioned. We are starting to understand the brain better but this understanding hasn’t even started yet. Post-modernism is about the notion that there might be lots of possible approaches and agreement is more about negotiation than about objective proof.

Future Trends

Maybe all of this will go to the mass user market, help busy managers by being extremely easy and swift to use, it developments might help to further them, or consultants will drive new methods to make money. There are numerous possible scenarios.

Frameworks

There are different ones that are brought forward here.

_Framework 1_ Problem solving as answering

_Framework 2_ Problem solving as searching

_Framework 3_ Problem solving as cultivation

_Framework 4_ Problem solving as mapping

_Framework 5_ Problem solving as debate

_Framework 6_ Problem solving as reperception