Reframing the problem
If your solutions are not good enough, maybe you’re just focusing on the wrong problems
I wrote an article earlier this year on how Design Thinking methodology can help you create and validate your design hypothesis within your product team. In summary, the process of generating and testing good design propositions relies heavily on the problem space: how well you know your audience and how clear are the pain points and main blockers your users are facing on their way towards small and big successes. This means that the solution to a problem depends on how we frame the problem.
The Problem / Solution spaces
Our problem statement will define the direction we take on the solution space. In this case, no matter how dedicated and efficient is your process in developing the new solution, the results will never be satisfactory if we are addressing the wrong problem.
In surveys of 106 C-suite executives who represented 91 private and public-sector companies in 17 countries, 85% strongly agreed or agreed that their organizations were bad at problem diagnosis, and 87% strongly agreed or agreed that this flaw carried significant costs — Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg
I know this scope is related to design field — more specifically to the design thinking process — but it is not at all restricted to designers and related roles. In fact, design thinking is a methodology utilized by many great innovators in literature, art, music, science, engineering, and business, of course.
So, are you solving the right problems?
Let’s take Trump’s border wall for example. Yes, it’s a lame example — but a good metaphor about problem framing.
I know this is a topic for a different conversation but, just for the sake of this article, let’s assume that Donald Trump is legitimately concerned with the American population and the immigrants in the United States and therefore he is willing to treat illegal immigration as a real and serious issue.
Why building a wall? The problem statement Trump makes is that illegal immigrants come to the United States by foot or by car through the Mexican border, which is why a physical barrier will stop them from coming in. Surely, this happens. But do all immigrants enter the country the same way? Of course not. Are all the illegal immigrants in the country coming from Mexican border? Of course not. Does a wall impede those people of entering the United States anyway? It will make it a little bit more difficult, but for sure it won’t stop them from coming in. On top of that, racist and stereotypical opinions are determinant for the president of the United States when he asserts that all Mexicans and Latin-American immigrants are criminals, rapists and drug dealers.
By the way, in confrontation to this statement, the recently elected congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said in an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that everyday immigrants commit crimes at a far lower rate than native-born Americans. This means that the budget for the wall construction is exorbitant and, if ever executed, it will cost a lot for the American tax payers.
Even if this come to be the greatest wall ever built — impenetrable, resistant, elegant — it won’t solve the real issue of illegal immigration. Plus, it will jeopardize investments from stakeholders and generate frustration around both North-American population and immigrants. However, if this is an issue of problem framing or just an evil political game, it’s another topic.
I believe this is a convenient metaphor because it’s a relatable topic (I guess almost everyone has heard about Trump’s border wall) with a real problem (illegal immigration) but that has not been addressed properly, leading to a controversial project that has been masked as the “ideal solution”. Against this backdrop, I would like to present a small story around the “Slow Elevator Problem” that is in essence the perfect analogy for how we think about problems and why so many teams invest in the wrong answers.
The Slow Elevator Problem: Imagine you are the owner of an office building, and your tenants are complaining about the elevator. It’s old and slow, and they have to wait a lot. Several tenants are threatening to break their leases if you don’t fix the problem.
When asked, most people quickly identify some solutions: replace the lift, install a stronger motor, or perhaps upgrade the algorithm that runs the lift. These suggestions fall into what I call a solution space: a cluster of solutions that share assumptions about what the problem is — in this case, that the elevator is slow.
However, when the problem is presented to building managers, they suggest a much more elegant solution: Put up mirrors next to the elevator. This simple measure has proved wonderfully effective in reducing complaints, because people tend to lose track of time when given something utterly fascinating to look at — namely, themselves.
The mirror solution is particularly interesting because in fact it is not a solution to the stated problem: It doesn’t make the elevator faster. Instead it proposes a different understanding of the problem.
I got this story from an interesting article written by Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg for the Harvard Business Review magazine. The author suggests best practices for effective reframing of the problem, which takes the form of a methodology summarised in seven topics:
1. Establish legitimacy
It’s difficult to use reframing if you are the only person in the room who understands the method. Try establish the method’s legitimacy within your team, explaining how it differs from merely diagnosing a problem and how it can potentially create dramatically better results. Presenting the slow elevator story helps a lot.
2. Bring outsiders into the discussion
An outside voice is important. Usually managers fall in love with a solution — introducing an innovation framework, for example — before they fully understand the problem. A recent study made by Johannes Hattula, of Imperial College London, indicates that if managers try to imagine a customer’s perspective themselves, they typically get it wrong.
3. Get people’s definitions in writing
It’s not unusual for people to leave a meeting thinking they all agree on what the problem is after a loose oral description, only to discover weeks or months later that they had different views of the issue. The individual definitions of the problem should ideally be gathered in advance of a discussion. To understand what other stakeholders think, you need to hear it from them.
4. Ask what’s missing
When faced with the description of a problem, people tend to delve into the details of what has been stated, paying less attention to what the description might be leaving out. To rectify this, make sure to ask explicitly what has not been captured or mentioned.
5. Consider multiple categories
Powerful change can come from transforming people’s perception of a problem. One way to trigger this kind of paradigm shift is to invite people to identify specifically what category of problem they think the group is facing.
6. Analyze positive exceptions
To find additional problem framings, look to instances when the problem did not occur, asking, “What was different about that situation?” Exploring such positive exceptions, sometimes called bright spots, can often uncover hidden factors whose influence the group may not have considered.
7. Question the objective
An important way to reframe a problem is by paying explicit attention to the objectives of the parties involved. In the negotiation classic Getting to Yes, Roger Fisher, William L. Ury, and Bruce Patton share the early management thinker Mary Parker Follett’s story about two people fighting over whether to keep a window open or closed. The underlying goals of the two turn out to differ: One person wants fresh air, while the other wants to avoid a draft.
In Wedell-Wedellsborg’s words, “as powerful as reframing can be, it takes time and practice to get good at it. As you start to work more with the method, urge your team to trust the process, and be prepared for it to feel messy and confusing at times”. It is never a one-person job — thinking or doing alone — but the power combination of trusting the real-world testings, learning from experimentation and relying on your colleagues’ capabilities and expertise.
Please check the full article here in order to understand in-depth each and every point of the methodology.
Thanks for reading and keep up the good work! 🌈
