The Problem With Problem-Solving

Just this past week, Seamus Maguire publsihed a book entitled Finding Fact Before Fixing: How Business Professionals Can Avoid False Assumptions When Solving Problems, which explores the reasons, biases, and blind spots that result in business professionals making assumptions and jumping to conclusions during problem-solving.

During a recent conversation with Seamus, I asked him: "What are some of the common mistakes business leaders make when problem-solving?" Here is his answer:

It’s my opinion that assumptions, not complexity, are the biggest obstacle to effective problem solving today.

There are a myriad of tools and frameworks that we can follow, from DMAIC to A3 and everything in between. However, even when these tools and frameworks are followed and we have the right people, problem-solving activities can still fall short.

The issue lies not in the tools themselves but rather in how people are hardwired to focus on fast results.

This creates a subconscious tendency to accept our best guesses as facts. We regularly skip the part of an investigation that requires experimental work or going to the gemba to observe.

This tendency is so subtle that we often don’t even realise we are doing it. Often, the potential causes feel so right and are so logical that it seems a waste of time to challenge them through experimentation.

The thing is, we will always be wrong more often than we are right in problem solving, and that’s ok! We can’t think our way out of a problem; if we could, well, it wouldn’t be a problem.

The alternative takes a little more work; it involves creating a way to test our hypothesis so that we learn more about the process/product in question until we reach the point where our knowledge encompasses the problem. At this point, it is no longer a problem.

That’s why true root causes often seem so obvious in hindsight. Until we have the knowledge, the issue is super complex. Then, once we gain the required knowledge, the problem becomes simple and mundane overnight, and you scratch your head, asking why it took so long to figure it out.

So next time you are asking for an update on a problem-solving activity, instead of asking ‘Have you got to root cause yet?’, or, ‘What’s the root cause?’, maybe ask, ‘What have you experimentally ruled out so far?’, or, ‘How did you confirm that?’ This will shift the focus to how problem-solving is conducted, rather than encouraging the team to accept assumptions as fact to achieve a quick result.

What do you think of Seamus's perspective? Do these types of mistakes happen in your organization? What have you done to rectify them? 

The Coaching Manager -- Toyota Kata and Scientific Thinking

Just this month, Tilo Schwarz and Jeffrey K. Liker published a new book entitled Giving Wings to Her Team: A Novel About Learning to Coach the Toyota Kata Way, which presents a story about the benefits of becoming a coaching manager and how to get there. We follow the fictional character, named Denise, on a journey of discovery and skill development, as she moves beyond the tools and concepts of Lean and focuses on daily practice that helps her supervisors achieve their goals. It's about the Toyota Kata approach, which helps anyone develop and apply scientific thinking -- an exploratory mindset of curiosity and experimentation.

When I recently spoke with Tilo and Jeff, I had the chance to ask them some questions specific to the concepts discussed in their current book, and how those concepts apply to daily work.

Question 1: What are the benefits of becoming a coaching manager?

In general terms, a coach teaches, watches the student, gives appropriate feedback, and assigns drills to learn specific skills.  You can coach anyone on any skill.  In Giving Wings to Her Team, the central character Denise learns a specific type of coaching for a particular skill set -- scientific thinking.

We often think that to navigate today’s complex challenges we need decisive leaders with a clear roadmap that they rigorously implement.  In reality, the more complex the challenge the less a roadmap will be helpful.  Instead, we need adaptive problem-solving, testing ideas rapidly, and learning our way to goals.  In Toyota Kata, this way is called scientific thinking—focus on facts, formulate hypotheses, test ideas instead of making assumptions, reflect, and learn.

Toyota Kata teaches a coaching approach that enables your team to become increasingly adaptive, innovative, and resilient – fostering a culture of continuous learning and improvement, so your team can meet their current challenges and be ready for more.

Question 2: How does Toyota Kata help you to become a coaching manager?

The term “kata” is used in Japanese martial arts and are the small skills the black belt teaches and then the student practices repeatedly, with feedback, until doing it the right way becomes a habit. Michael Jordan put it nicely: “You can practice shooting eight hours a day, but if your technique is wrong, then all you become is very good at shooting the wrong way.” 

In the novel, Denise faces the biggest challenges of her life as a manufacturing manager and is fortunate to get coaching help from Maggie who runs the local gym.  Maggie has studied and used Toyota Kata in her gym.  She helps Denise learn to work with her team to set big challenges they can relate to, study the current condition, set short-term target conditions, and then experiment toward these targets.  Denise struggles at first, but through practice, and Maggie’s coaching, she gets better and better at giving wings to her team.  

You can learn along with Denise how to become a coach of scientific thinking and by coaching your team to achieve goals that at first seem impossible.  In this book, we go beyond laundry lists of coaching best practices and demonstrate how to develop actual skills in yourself and your team.  

We hope our novel will help you start a learning journey of your own.

What are your experiences with Toyota Kata? Have you applied it in your organization? How has it benefited your managers and teams?