Building Sustainable Problem-Solving Capabilities Within Your Organization
At Karma Advisory, our sincere intention is to support our clients in being successful. We have learned the importance of listening, critical thinking, and preparing for the challenges ahead. Whether it be organizational, operational, technology, or data challenges, we pride ourselves in working across critical domains to listen for and find potential challenges, develop solutions and recommendations, and facilitate complex decision-making.
Our Three-Pronged Approach to Problem Mitigation
From our perspective, there are three aspects of problem mitigation:
- Gather issues, risks, and open questions
- Find solutions and mitigate risks
- Create organization-specific problem-resolution frameworks and build internal capabilities
Problem Solving Framework
1. Gather Issues, Risks, and Open Questions
The fundamental tool for any project is a control log. We prefer to keep it simple and track issues, risks, and open questions in a spreadsheet. The goal is to have a net to catch the implicit and explicit challenges a project is facing. By keeping track of the challenges, we can prioritize and integrate problem-resolution and risk-mitigation into the project workflow and provide an escalation and communication path.
Our issue/risk evaluation includes a detailed decision tree and analysis of scope, schedule, or budget impact. These evaluation frameworks are customized to each specific project and adjusted based on the relative scale of the work.
2. Find Solutions and Mitigate Risks
The Karma Advisory team leverages a hypothesis-driven approach for complex challenges with significant organizational, operational, or technical implications. Throughout our analysis and development of solutions, we attempt to be mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive. This provides the clarity to reflect on the different components.
Our Problem-Solving Framework
Gather and review data
We first seek to understand the situation and complicating factors for any given problem. In this process of soliciting or analyzing data, we seek to objectively describe the situation so that all stakeholders involved can agree on the baseline condition. To have clarity on the starting point of a problem is the first and most crucial step. Next, we seek to document the key complicating factors. Again, we describe the complicating factors objectively so that all stakeholders involved agree on the challenges.
Develop a hypothesis by understanding the key questions
Based on our understanding of the situation and complication, we develop a questions tree with binary questions — yes or no. We do this to force tough analysis and decision making.
Review the initial analysis and the solution guiding principles with principal stakeholders
Although the Karma team is already developing potential solutions, we first review the initial analysis and guiding principles with the key stakeholders. This ensures we have a detailed understanding of the problem and decision-making criteria to evaluate potential solutions.
Develop options and recommendations
We develop an options analysis with potential solutions and risk mitigation strategies. We gather data that may help evaluate a specific recommendation.
Review options analysis and mobilize on the solution
Once the solution has been reviewed — usually with a variety of stakeholders — and the path forward is determined, we work on mobilizing the solution.
3. Create Organization-Specific Problem-Resolution Frameworks and Build Internal Capabilities
We have found that the most critical value-add we can provide is finding the patterns and trends in the challenges an initiative or organization is facing. Alongside our clients, we work on developing frameworks and operationalizing them within an organization to support long-term problem identification and resolution.
Real-World Application
In one case, we worked with a cross-functional system where the technology team maintained the system, and the business — including shared services and programs — used it for their operations and customer interactions. Shared Services and Operations teams would forward any internal or external issues to the technical team to resolve. This approach wasn’t sustainable, and all stakeholders were frustrated. Our first insight was categorizing the various issues between technical end-user, internal requests, and enhancement requests. We developed workflows, communication plans, and prioritization frameworks for each type of issue. This ensured cases were being managed and responded to with an appropriate service-level agreement.
Our second insight was recognizing the lack of shared accountability between teams since no single department “owned” the customer experience. Customer issues were transferred between departments, creating a poor customer experience and preventing any team from fully resolving issues. In response, we developed a cross-functional client-services model to help bring various departments together, helping them understand each other’s roles and the bigger picture for servicing end-customers.
By applying these frameworks and principles, we help organizations not just solve immediate problems, but build sustainable capabilities for addressing challenges in the future.
Originally published at Karma Advisory.
