A Practical Approach to Problem Solving

August 30, 2021 | by David Hoffman, Guest Blogger

A quick internet search will reveal over 200 acronyms for problem-solving; there is no shortage of advice on how to solve a problem. However, for anyone in a position of responsibility—from a CEO to a floor supervisor—the real challenge becomes which problem to solve first.  When a business is in crisis and everything seems to be going south, the first problem that must be solved is identifying which problem is of primary importance.  During times like this, decision makers become overwhelmed and might say something like: “Everything is so screwed up. I have no idea where to start!”

Having an idea of where to start is essential, and “IDEA” can be the acronym where help begins.

Identify the Opportunities—What seems to be broken? What needs to be fixed first? What is a symptom of the problem(s) versus a root cause?

Data Gathering—Important decisions need to be made based on evidence, which is usually in the form of data. Recognizing when emotion guides the decision-making process is the first step to ensuring reason and logic as the basis of where to start. Going by gut feelings is gutsy but usually not effective. In fact, leading by the gut is a euphemism for leading by emotions. Logic, reasoning, and evidence offer a much firmer ground on which to start evaluating a challenging situation.

Eliminate the Noise—Digging into data can lead to rabbit holes. Keep in mind the purpose of data collection is to lead you to the first problem that needs to be solved.

Assess the Results—Where to start, or which problem is solved first, is determined by the evidence collected, and the scope of that problem is narrowed by clearing out all that is not essential to solving it.

The following case demonstrates how the “IDEA” process was applied in an educational setting.  The situation involved an honors student who was failing a geometry course. Having never received any grade lower than a “B”, the student became increasingly anxious and fearful of math class. His parents were frustrated. Their son was always a model student. As his efforts increased, his grades continued to drop. He started to miss school on test days, and as a result, his grades in other courses began to suffer as well.

Fortunately, his teacher and parents were quick to contact his guidance counselor, and a conference was scheduled to figure out what was happening. Without knowing it, they began to follow the “IDEA” problem-identification technique.

Identify the Opportunities:  A brainstorming session generated reasons for the student’s difficulties.  These included:

1. being misplaced in an honors course,
2. being overscheduled between academics, clubs, and sports,
3. being the victim of a personality clash with the teacher,
4. having a cognitive learning issue with the geometry curriculum,
5. becoming distracted by an increasingly active social life.

At this point, the guidance counselor realized that he needed to gather information before any decisions could be made. He moved onto the second step of “IDEA”.

Data gathering: The guidance counselor gathered all the records available from the student’s previous five years in school.  These included:

1. Report cards from middle school,
2. Standardized test scores, (administered at the end of 8th grade),
3. Aptitude test scores, (administered in 7th grade),
4. Individual comments from teachers and administrators,
5. Anecdotal information from a meeting with the student.

This was a large amount of information. With all the sources, the guidance counselor felt confident he could move onto the third step to identifying the problem.

Eliminate the noise:  There was no record of the student having a problem with teachers.  He was popular with classmates as well as teachers. In middle school, he led an active social life and participated in sports. His grades were superior, and his algebra teacher enthusiastically recommended the student for Honors Geometry. His geometry teacher was concerned because she saw him working hard, completing homework, participating in class, yet still performing poorly on tests and quizzes.  She sensed that things weren’t “clicking” for him, but she didn’t know why or what she could do to help.

At that point, the guidance counselor focused in on the battery of aptitude tests that the district administered to students in 7th grade. He saw something that his teachers and parents either had missed or dismissed as unimportant. It was anything but unimportant, and it led to the fourth step of the “IDEA” process.

Assess the Results: The aptitude tests administered to 7th graders divided math abilities into subgroups including numerical, abstract, logical, quantitative, and spatial intelligence. The student scored above the 90th percentile in all the mathematic subgroups except one: spatial, or the ability to perceive and derive insight from visual data. Spatial intelligence encompasses the ability to manipulate shapes in space and see them in different positions. For this subgroup, the student tested in the 13th percentile.

The Honors geometry course taught traditional Euclidean Geometry and the newer “Transformational” geometry. The student and teacher now understood what the problem was and began to work on a plan to compensate for that weakness. As his understanding improved, so did his confidence and enjoyment of geometry. He ended the year with a grade of B+. (Hey, it was an honors class!)

Without a system designed to accurately identify the problem, the student might have dropped to a lower-level class, or changed teachers, or dropped an activity, so that he could put in more fruitless hours of study.  But before fixing anything, he, his parents, and teachers needed to recognize exactly what needed fixing. This simple school scenario can be applied to the challenging situations we face as business leaders, supervisors, and workers.  When you need an idea of what needs to be fixed first, the IDEA technique can get you moving in the right direction.

David Hoffman
Guest blogger David Hoffman works behind the scenes at CBS, providing the consulting team with a unique “non-manufacturing” point of view that challenges conventional thinking and inspires break-through ideas. His internal contributions to CBS help our customer-facing consultants better serve the needs of our clientele—and elevate the performance of the CBS organization as a whole.