Challenging Assumptions

I recently watched some brilliant videos about innovation but there were some really interesting ones about questioning assumptions.  They are part of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. 

In one,  Tina Seelig, the speaker, talks about giving some students an exercise in entrepreneurism.  She gave each group $5, and told them to see how much money they could make in two hours and to give a three minute presentation on the results.

The students came up with variety of innovative schemes that met the challenge.  Most of the groups quite reasonably considered what they could do with $5 in two hours.  However, a couple of the groups did rather better.  They chose to ignore the assumptions of the initial problem – the $5.  One group booked tables at a very popular restaurant and when the usual queue formed outside, they sold their reservations to the queue.  Another group found a company that wanted to sell services to students, so the students sold their three minute slot to the company and did their presentation about the company’s services.

The link below is to a different five minute talk she gave about “Challenging Assumptions”.  In it she gets her audience to solve a simple problem.  The real lesson of the talk comes at the end.  A brilliant observation about solving problems, which I won’t give away. 

http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2779

A Supply Chain Management Problem

How would you change the fishing industry?

In Japan, the aftermath of the tsunami left large parts of the country’s infrastructure in tatters.  So it was for the fishing industry.  Trawlers were lost, harbours devastated, buildings destroyed, everything gone.  A monumental problem.

An article in the New Scientist details an attempt to rebuild a fishing business in a new way.  The fundamental problem for the fishermen was that the fish markets had been destroyed. They had nowhere to sell their catch. 

So somebody had the idea of turning it into an internet business.  They equipped the boats with webcams and laptops and posted details of their catch in real-time. Their customers bought the fish as it was caught.  They did away with the physical market, and radically changed the nature of the business

Faced with total disruption of their business, they were forced to rethink the way they did business.  Normally, it would require a considerable leap of imagination to ‘do away with market’, but in this case it was taken away from them.  The fish market has been a part of the industry forever, how could you consider not having one?

Rebuilding the old infrastructure would cost millions.  This is a solution that has changed the supply chain and provided real benefits for customers.  Whether or not it solves any of the other problems the fishing industry has, is still to be decided. 

 It shows you what can be achieved when you are forced to question your assumptions.

How to reduce energy consumption

How do you reduce domestic energy use?

If you think about it logically, there a number of ways.

You can put the price up, but that penalises lower income groups. You can build or convert houses to conserve heat, but that takes a lot of time. You can also redesign domestic equipment to consume less energy, but this also takes time. Lastly, you can encourage people to use less energy by installing energy monitors that give them direct feedback of their energy use. 

All of these methods have associated drawbacks and costs.

I recently a read a report that explains a new idea.  It uses ‘social norms’ and is incredibly simple.  All you do is let people know how their energy consumption compares with other people.  You just print their performance on the energy bill.  You let them know the average for similar houses for that period, and what the best performers achieved.  That’s it, you leave the rest to them. 

Most people recognise the benefit to the community of saving energy and will be motivated to aspire to do better.  The method is ‘aspirational’.

How effective is it?  Typically, it reduces consumption by an average of 2%.  That doesn’t sound much, but it is equivalent to the reduction you get by increasing the price by 11%.  Furthermore it doesn’t ‘wear off’, it motivates people to improve their relative performance.

It is such a great solution, and as with all great ideas, costs little.

 Great solutions to difficult problems are found by thinking in a new way.

Problem Solving - The Value of Uncertainty

Should organisations avoid uncertainty? 

Usually, organisations manage their affairs in order to minimise uncertainty.  Shareholders and potential investors dislike it as it leads to uncertain returns and uncertain returns mean lower value.  It is tempting to think that organisations would be more effective if they could avoid all risk and uncertainty, especially since people naturally dislike uncertainty.

Unfortunately, we have no control over events.

Military campaigns were often planned in minute detail; every contingency was taken into account in order to eliminate uncertainty.  But modern warfare no longer enables conflicts to be planned in such detail.  Campaigns have strategic objectives, but the nature of asymmetric warfare means that day to day events are impossible to predict.  So there is little point in training officers in standardized tactics, they need to be able to interpret events and react accordingly.

I read a story about an organisation that was planning a complex reorganisation.  A senior executive distributed a handout of his presentation, but the pages were in complete disorder.  Everybody was confused, “what order are these supposed to be in?” they asked.  His reply was that ‘he did not know’.  He knew roughly what needed to be done, but he could not predict every eventuality – they needed to be able to react to events as they went along.  They would only know the right order when the task was completed.

Not only should we not avoid uncertainty, we should embrace it. It makes us better at dealing with problems.

Intuitive Problem Solving

Are there situations where the deliberative, reasoned approach to problem solving fails?

Michael Yon wrote a blog that covered the US Army activities in Iraq.  In August 2005, he wrote an entry that described Lt Colonel Kurilla’s apparent extrasensory ability to spot insurgents from amongst the din and bustle of urban Mosul:

“Some months back, a new lieutenant named Brian Flynn was riding with the Kurilla for his first three weeks, when Kurilla spotted three men walking adjacent to where Major Mark Bieger and his Stryker had been hit with a car bomb a week prior. The three men looked suspicious to Kurilla, whose legendary sense about people is so keen that his soldiers call it the “Deuce Sixth-Sense.” His read on people and situations is so uncanny it borders the bizarre.
 
That day, Kurilla sensed “wrong” and told his soldiers to check the three men. As the Stryker dropped its ramp, one of the terrorists pulled a pistol from under his shirt.”

Did Lt Colonel Kurilla have a unique talent?   It seems not. 

US Army officer training has traditionally been based upon ‘rational analysis’.  Whereas in the field, they are engaged in volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) environments and they need to be able to evaluate and respond to critical situations under extreme pressure.  These are situations where there isn’t time to deliberate or to ask for advice - they rely on their intuition.  The US Army has since instigated a programme to improve junior officer’s intuitive capability. (report)

Organisations tend to rely on ‘rational’ problem solving processes because it is ‘logical’ - but some problems are qualitative rather than quantitative, and need a different approach.  We have other problem solving capabilities apart from our reason. 

We need to be bold enough to trust in them.

Intuition - A Critical Problem Solving Faculty

A true story.

A racing driving approached a blind corner at 150 mph. He couldn’t see what was round the bend.  He had been around this corner many times that day, so he had no reason to be apprehensive.  Suddenly he was overcome by an overwhelming sensation - he needed brake IMMEDIATELY.  He came slowly round the corner and saw a car crash in the centre of the track.  If he had not slowed down he would have undoubtedly have had a head-on collision. 

Inexplicably, when asked why he slowed down, he could not give a reason; he just intuitively knew that he had to stop.  Did he have some rare psychic gift, was it ESP? 

No.

After the race he watched the recording of the event.  He saw himself approaching the corner, and everything seemed normal, there was no apparent reason to brake.  Subsequent replays showed that the crowd weren’t behaving normally.  Usually when a car approaches a corner the crowd watches its progress. This time they were not.  The crowd was watching events taking place at the crash site.  The approaching driver did not consciously notice this; however, his unconscious mind did notice and immediately warned the driver.  At no time during the event did he spot the unusual behaviour of the crowd. 

Intuition is a little understood phenomenon.  Undoubtedly, it saved the driver that day, when his conscious faculties let him down.  As rational beings, we like to think that our conscious intellect will cope with life’s challenges.

Sometimes, being rational is not sufficient.

The Rene Descartes Approach to Problem Solving

Can a car be allergic to ice cream?

Soon after buying a new Pontiac, a man made a complaint.  “Every time I buy vanilla ice cream, when I start back from the store my car won't start. If I get any other kind of ice cream, the car starts just fine”

Pontiac sent an engineer and to go with the man to the ice cream store. It was vanilla ice cream that night and, sure enough, after they came back to the car, it wouldn't start.  The engineer returned for three more nights. The first night, the man got chocolate, the car started. The second night, he got strawberry, the car started. The third night he ordered vanilla, the car failed to start.

Every night the engineer took notes: he jotted down all sorts of data, time of day, type of gas used, time to drive back and forth, etc.  He soon found that the man took less time to buy vanilla than any other flavour. Why? 

As vanilla was the most popular flavour, it was kept at the front of the store for quick service. All the other flavours were kept in the back of the store at a different counter where it took longer.  Once time became the problem - not the vanilla ice cream, the engineer quickly came up with the answer: a vapour lock.  The extra time taken to get the other flavours allowed the engine to cool down sufficiently to start, but when the man got vanilla, the engine was still too hot for the vapour lock to dissipate.

Not all problems need a creative solution, or are particularly complex. For some problems you need to be meticulous.

As Rene Descartes put it, “Divide each problem into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it.”