When a machine stops, a customer complains, or a project stalls, most companies turn to the same experienced people. Their knowledge is valuable. But as long as describing the problem and investigating solutions remain their responsibility, the organization will need them again in every new situation.
Keeping problem solving within the team
A shared working language helps teams share problem-solving knowledge. Can we distinguish a symptom from a cause? Do we know where and under what conditions the problem occurs? What data supports a proposal? Asking these questions regularly makes it possible to investigate together in meetings rather than defend competing explanations.
I see creative thinking as part of this investigation. While exploring causes, we can ask whether the sequence of operations could change, whether two tasks could be separated, or whether an existing resource could serve another purpose. This also lets us examine our own assumptions. TRIZ and human-centered methods allow us to consider technical conditions and the experience of the person doing the work within the same problem.
For a method learned in training to become part of daily work, the team needs to apply it to its own problem. The team describes the problem, generates options, designs a trial, and records what it observes. The manager participates by making time for investigation, allowing discussion of assumptions that proved wrong, and passing what was learned on to other teams.
In our own training sessions and workshops, we examine how the team arrived at a proposal alongside the proposal itself. We care about participants knowing where to start with the next problem. If a team can follow the same path of investigation independently on a new issue, experience has begun to move beyond the knowledge of a few individuals and become shared across the organization.
A first step is to define a few standard questions for describing a problem. Using these questions on the team's own problem and sharing what trials reveal with other teams brings that shared working language into daily work.
