Short article that may mistakenly seem easy to apply in reality. Let’s start. You need to modulate a situation in the company, i.e., you would like some different output from the current state of things, but you don’t know what the problem is. Abstract. You have any goal and an obvious obstacle, or the obstacle is really not knowing what to do. How do you proceed? It is up to you to move.
Very first thing to do. I say it in English because that’s how I learned it and that’s how I remember it. Follow the (known) path, hit resistance, then stay. That is, don’t bounce away from the problem, accept the frustration, the cognitive dissonance of not seeing a solution that you know exists. Eliminate distractions and allow yourself to focus. It doesn’t look like it here but the state of mind is important. The parasympathetic has to win (ref mindfulness techniques), the rush to solve and the urgency of the situation does not. And to that you have to add a curiosity factor, you have to find as much as it might not be immediate an element of your interest, a reason why you feel the probler in part yours. The target is that balance between personal challenge and feasibility (ref Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, ref flow).
Map the problem–from objective data though–the premises, constructs, implicit assumptions and actual constraints, prior attempts. Understand a segment, explore, change perspective (ref George Pólya). Have sub-problems or super-problems already been solved compared to yours? There is so much open source material to date that probably something useful on the topic can be found. Small aside about changing perspectives: there are isomorphisms, that is, the possibility of moving from one model of reality to another that perhaps in the surroundings of your problem is better developed.
You have isolated the real problems within the problem, you are at a point that seems irreducible. A theoretical computer scientist would now construct a graph of possible modulations, of possible next moves. But before analyzing the situation and choosing how to proceed the graph must be constructed, ideas must be thought out. To do this he works in projection, absurdly for example. Ask yourself how to make a problem worse, not how to solve it (ref Giorgio Nardone, ref strategic problem solving). That is, learn about yourself and eliciting ideas in any way that is effective for you. All conceivable ways to attack the problem should be enumerated.
This last concept I take from ethical hacking. Pivot. Keep the goal fixed but change the path to get there. Find the route segment that yes makes you deviate but heuristically might make the goal attainable. Usually a way in exists because a completely offline system is also completely useless. This is the time for simulations, for mental experiments, for pattern recognition. A previous article of mine on decision-making models could be hooked to this point if you wish. I will add this: problems are usually solved through synergy between (at least) two people, creating constructive interaction and feedback loops.
Now we come to talk about the upstream problem. Identify problems in time, before damage, before outcomes you don’t want. So let’s start again from the initial situation: observe a company. Let’s say that at least partially it is in compensation, it works, it gets the job done. How do you look for problems before they are visible? You don’t. You bring into the system-company people from outside, different points of view and unaccustomed to the situation. People – consultants – who do auditing for a living. Auditing means situation analysis, objective analysis without the emotional constructs of those in the company who work there. It means arriving with a wealth of theoretical and experiential knowledge and–in the first instance–doing pattern recognition to first find problems that you have interacted with before. And we go from there, we talk about goals, KPIs, transition plans. This we do in M96 Consulting.