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Hugo Sarrazin: It starts with an incredible amount of empathy for the user and uses that to define the problem. It does pause and go out in the wild and spend an enormous amount of time seeing how people interact with objects, seeing the experience they’re getting, seeing the pain points or joy—and uses that to infer and define the problem.
This is Consulting 101 for new and aspiring consultants to read. My first half year in consulting went in understanding the aspects mentioned in the book and the anxiety associated with navingating a firm. While there are definitely no silver bullets, there are indeed some cardinal sins as consultants which any good org drills into it's consultants from day 1. Charles Conn: For me, problem solving is the answer to the question “What should I do?” It’s interesting when there’s uncertainty and complexity, and when it’s meaningful because there are consequences. Your son’s climbing is a perfect example. There are consequences, and it’s complicated, and there’s uncertainty—can he make that grab? I think we can apply that same frame almost at any level. You can think about questions like “What town would I like to live in?” or “Should I put solar panels on my roof?” Charles Conn: Absolutely. The third step, which we also emphasize, along with good problem definition, is rigorous prioritization—we ask the questions “How important is this lever or this branch of the tree in the overall outcome that we seek to achieve? How much can I move that lever?” Obviously, we try and focus our efforts on ones that have a big impact on the problem and the ones that we have the ability to change. With salmon, ocean conditions turned out to be a big lever, but not one that we could adjust. We focused our attention on fish habitats and fish-harvesting practices, which were big levers that we could affect. Most consultants spend a big portion of their time making presentations (often in PowerPoint). Utilize the support team! Keep it structured, from top to bottom, from end to end.
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Structure, structure, structure. MECE, MECE, MECE. Hypothesis-driven, Hypothesis-driven, Hypothesis-driven.” – Former associate in Dusseldorf and San Francisco offices Know your audience: It’s important to tailor your presentation to your audience. Consider their needs, goals, and level of expertise. This will help you choose the right tone, level of detail, and type of content to include. When I went to work with Gordon Moore at the Moore Foundation, the problem that he asked us to look at was “How can we save Pacific salmon?” Now, that sounds like an impossible question, but it was amenable to precisely the same type of disaggregation and allowed us to organize what became a 15-year effort to improve the likelihood of good outcomes for Pacific salmon. When you spend more time at client location than with your peers it is very easy to lose sense of belonging. Don't forget it's the client>>firm>>you.
Make one day a week to be completely free of work, both physically and mentally. Tell your boss about it! He/she will respect it. And so should you.Topics including ‘developing an approach’, ‘interviewing for information’, ‘brainstorming’ and ‘selling the idea’ have actionable recommendations which we can benefit from by putting them into use in our own jobs. Simon London: Now, is there a danger that your logic tree can be impossibly large? This, I think, brings us onto the third step in the process, which is that you have to prioritize. Chapter 4: The Problem-Solving Mindset — This chapter provides advice on how to approach problem-solving with the right mindset. It emphasizes the importance of being systematic, thorough, and creative in one’s approach to problem-solving. Simon London: You do hear these ideas—that if you have a big enough data set and enough algorithms, they’re going to find things that you just wouldn’t have spotted, find solutions that maybe you wouldn’t have thought of. Does machine learning sort of revolutionize the problem-solving process? Or are these actually just other tools in the toolbox for structured problem solving? Hugo Sarrazin: Yeah, it is not easy when people have spent an enormous amount of time seeped in design thinking or user-centric design, whichever word you want to use. If the person who’s applying classic problem-solving methodology is very rigid and mechanical in the way they’re doing it, there could be an enormous amount of tension. If there’s not clarity in the role and not clarity in the process, I think having the two together can be, sometimes, problematic.
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