Thinking Clearly · Lesson 1 of 6
Why think clearly?
The most expensive mistake isn’t a bad solution; it’s a good solution to the wrong problem. See why the problem deserves most of your thinking time, and what this course will give you.
Fifty-five minutes on the problem
“If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions.” — attributed to Albert Einstein
Most of us do the opposite. A problem appears, and within minutes we are discussing solutions: a new machine, a new hire, a new software system, a training programme. The problem itself gets a sentence or two. The solution gets the meetings, the budget and the energy.
That is backwards, because a solution can only be as good as our understanding of the problem. A brilliant answer to the wrong question is still a wrong answer, and often an expensive one: it uses money, attention and goodwill, and when it fails, people conclude that change doesn’t work.
Who needs to think clearly?
- Entrepreneurs need to find a problem a customer will actually pay to have solved. Many start-ups build an excellent product for a problem nobody has, or for a symptom of a deeper problem nobody has named.
- Managers and consultants need to find what is really holding a system back. Ten complaints from ten departments are rarely ten problems.
- Anyone in a recurring argument needs to see what the argument is really about, before choosing a side.
Pause and think: a plant has late orders. The manager’s first idea is to buy another machine. What would you want to know first?
- The price of the machine
- How long delivery and installation of the new machine will take, and who will run it
- Why orders are late: a real capacity shortage, or how work is released?
- Whether the competitors have one
“We need another machine” is a solution, not a problem. Very often, late orders come from the way work is released and prioritised, and the existing machines have hidden capacity. Buying a machine for the wrong problem adds cost and leaves the lateness in place.
Solving the wrong problem
A small example of how it happens. Customers complain that the lift in an office building is slow. The obvious solution is a faster lift, which is very expensive. Someone asks a different question: is the problem that the lift is slow, or that waiting feels long? Mirrors are fitted beside the lift doors. People look at themselves while they wait, and the complaints almost disappear.
The faster lift wasn’t wrong; it answered a different problem. The skill this course is about is finding which problem you are really solving.
“It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” — attributed to Albert Einstein
What this course covers
- Why we don’t think clearly: fast thinking, the biases built into all of us, and why complex systems fool us.
- When cause and effect hide: how a well-meant intervention wrecked a national park.
- Three habits of clear thinking: slow down, try to prove yourself wrong, and reason from rules to cases. And spot the boundaries your assumptions draw.
- The logic behind the Thinking Process: necessity and sufficiency, and how to challenge a cause-and-effect claim without making it personal.
- The Thinking Process tools: a first look at the tools TOC uses to answer three questions: what to change, what to change to, and how to cause the change.
Check your understanding
Answer all five. Get four right to complete the lesson.
1. Why should most of the thinking go into the problem rather than the solution?
- Solutions are easy to buy
- A solution can only be as good as our understanding of the problem
- Problems are more interesting to discuss than solutions in a meeting
- Solutions take less time
A great answer to the wrong question is still wrong.
2. “We need another machine” is…
- A clear problem statement
- A root cause
- A measurement
- A solution, not a problem
Ask what problem it would solve, and whether that problem is real.
3. In the lift story, what changed the answer?
- Asking a different question about what the problem really was
- A bigger budget
- A faster lift
- A customer survey about waiting times at the lift
The problem was how waiting felt, not the speed of the lift.
4. What is the cost of solving the wrong problem?
- Nothing, if the solution is good, since it will still improve something somewhere
- Only the money spent
- Money, attention and goodwill, and belief that change works
- A delay of a few days
Failed changes make the next change harder.
5. TOC’s Thinking Process answers which three questions?
- Who, what and when?
- What to change, what to change to, and how to cause the change?
- Plan, do, check?
- Why change, how to change, and how much will it cost?
You’ll meet the tools for each in lesson 6.