Business Problem Solving
Sa1_Jyyy
2.3Worklans1.pptx
Workplans: Undertaking efficient problem solving
Dr. Stephen Hills
Learning objectives
To be able to link logic tree hypotheses to a plan for fact gathering and analysis.
To be clear about the questions we need our analyses to address.
To order our analyses in the most efficient way.
To produce a workplan and a project plan.
To clarify current understandings and unknowns.
The seven-steps process
How do you define a problem in a precise way to meet the decision maker’s needs?
How do you disaggregate the issues and develop hypotheses to be explored?
How do you prioritize what to do and what not to do?
How do you develop a workplan and assign analytical tasks?
How do you decide on the fact gathering and analysis to resolve the issues, while avoiding cognitive biases?
How do you go about synthesizing the findings to highlight insights?
How do you communicate them in a compelling way?
Step 4: Build a workplan and timetable
Make a plan for fact gathering and analysis
Assign team members to tasks with specific outputs and completion times
Workplanning
Critical path
We need to prioritise the most important analysis for problem solving so that we are always working on the parts of the problem that have the highest probability of yielding insight.
Workplanning with frequent updated iterations after the initial workplan enable us to stay on the critical path.
Link your advanced logic tree ‘leaves’ to a plan for fact gathering and analysis.
Do not wade prematurely into data without doing the thinking on the underlying structure of the problem.
Think hard about problem structure and desired outputs before you start running numbers.
Workplan principles
Do not do any analysis for which we don’t have a hypothesis – you must be clear about what questions your analyses answer.
Clarify the outputs you want from analysis – visualise what the output might look like so to be clear on whether this is desirable or not.
Order analysis logically so that analysis that may make other analysis redundant is done first, e,g, a finding that solves the problem, such as to not pursue solar panels.
Do knock-out analyses first, the really important analyses next and the nice to have analyses last.
Workplan
Case: Workplanning the nursing problem
Deductive logic tree: Nursing outcomes
Workplan: Nursing outcomes
Issue 1
Issue 2
Chunky workplans & lean project plans
Chunky workplans and lean project plans
Long workplans are unnecessary and unhelpful.
They can quickly become out of date.
You are at risk of being swallowed up by the analyses that could be done, taking you off of the critical path.
Rather, workplans should focus on the most important initial analyses and revised as new insights emerge.
Couple these with lean (i.e., less detailed) project plans using a Gantt chart covering fixed milestone dates to ensure the overall projects stays on time.
Chunky workplan
Lean project plan
One-day answers
One-day answers
Crisp and concise.
Stating what you know about your problem at any point in the process helps to clarify:
What understandings are emerging.
What unknowns still stand between the answers and us.
One-day answers convey our current best analysis of the situation, complications or insightful observations and our best guess at the solutions, as we iterate between our evolving workplans and our analysis.
This helps us to divert resources to areas where we have the biggest gaps in problem solving and shut down analysis that is not taking us anywhere.
As analysis findings come in, we can refine our one-day answers and begin to synthesize our evidence into more complete stories.
Structuring one-day answers
Situation: A short description of the situation that prevails at the outset of problem solving. The state of affairs that sets up the problem.
Observation or complication: A set of observations or complications around the situation that creates the tension or dynamic that captures the problem. What changed or what went wrong that created the problem.
Implication or resolution: The best idea of the implication or resolution of the problem that you have right now. At the beginning this will be rough and speculative. Later it will be a more and more refined idea that answers the question “What should we do?”
One-day answers: What they are not
Case: Hardware company one-day answer
Case: Hardware company one-day answer
Situation: Herchinger is a dominant player with a long and successful history in one region and seeks to expand.
Observation or complication: A new competitor, Home Depot, has emerged with a warehouse superstore model that is growing faster due to lower pricing made possible by sourcing economies of scale, lower cost logistics and higher asset productivity.
Implication or resolution: To remain competitive via lower pricing Herchinger needs to quickly reform its inventory management and logistics systems and to develop lower-cost sourcing models.
Conclusions
Conclusions
Good discipline and specificity in workplanning will make your problem solving more efficient.
If you order your analyses correctly and undertake your knock-out analyses first you will stay on the critical path to your solution.
Workplans should be be chunky – short and specific.
Study plans should be lean – capturing key milestones so you deliver on time.
One day answers clarify where you are and what work is left to do.
Workshop: Which three MBA programmes should I apply to and in what order?
Workshop: Chunky workplan
Identify two issues from the previous problem of picking the best MBA programme for you.
Produce a chunky workplan for each issue:
Definition of issue
Hypothesis
Analysis
Source
End product
