Saluting the Captain
Sometimes we have a problem and we immediately try to solve that problem. This happened to Norwegian Claus Jørstad.
Claus had an injured knee and was struggling to stand up in the shower. He had a problem and was looking for a solution. We all do this. We say things in job applications like “I like to find solutions” or “I am a solution-oriented person”. Claus found a solution. It was simple IKEA stool. A nice easy solution to an identified problem. However, if the problem is not fully thought through it can create more problems and these can be much more serious. For Claus, his solution had more serious (at least for him), unplanned consequences as you can read from this Article.
“Once I got home, I put my new piece of furniture in the shower and got in, this time without clothes. I calmly sat down on the stool and soaped up my whole body, including the ‘captain’ and his ‘two sailors’. As you might imagine, the sailors are what dangles between my legs, but since this is a public Facebook post I’ll stick to more flowery language.
So, when the deck got slippery and the captain and his crew got dizzy from all the foam, they started sliding around like drunk sailors!
Then something terrible happened. A sailor unwittingly made his escape and slid down one of the holes in the stool. I didn’t notice at first, but as you know things tend to expand when they are warmed up. And when a sailor gets really hot, then he really expands in size. I didn’t notice this until I tried standing up, only to find that the stool was hanging on behind me, and a searing white pain went through me like lightning. That good-for-nothing sailor was stuck in the hole!”
The story continues but raises a serious point. Have you found the right problem? Have you tested the solutions fully? Maybe asked others if this solution makes sense? Do they see any problems with your solution?
Over the last year NoTosh has worked with the German corporation ThyssenKrupp on the Innovation Garage, a start up inside a corporation, where engineers had to find the right problem. This is a challenge, we had to stop the teams finding immediate solutions. We didn’t want them getting stuck, though in a different way from Claus. We wanted them to spend time digging into the problem.
We gave them tools to do this but really had to stop them moving too quickly towards a solution. When they did come up with solutions they had to test their ideas by speaking to as many people as possible to gather feedback, not just from their fellow engineers but users too.
We got them to look at the Mystery and not the immediate solutions. Unknown unknowns.
What are your Mysteries? Do you always jump back to the same ‘solutions’ that have been tried before? Have you prototyped and gotten feedback?
I know teachers who don’t share resources because “It’s not finished yet”. Surely it’s better to ‘fail early’ than invest lots of time on something that fails in the end?
