What is a problem-solving workshop?
A problem-solving workshop is a rapid session that helps you:
- Understand the root cause of a problem
- Quickly generate ideas to solve it
- Evaluate the ideas to ensure they're robust
- Make a plan to test or implement the solution
This workshop critically assesses what’s going wrong and helps you find out what your options are to solve it, before agreeing on a viable solution.
When should you run a problem-solving workshop?
This workshop can be used in various circumstances:
- A show-stopping problem that grinds everything to a halt
- An intermittent problem that you want to get to the bottom of
- A customer or user problem, such as a pain point when using a service or product
- A high-level business problem, for example "too many customer complaints", "conversion rate is too low", or "operating costs are too high"
How do you run a problem-solving workshop?
1. Get the right people together
Invite all affected parties to a session. These are people that the problem has a direct impact on. Including those that aren't impacted may offer a more objective view, but ultimately; more people equals more time. We want to solve problems with haste, so we can find out if it's the right solution sooner rather than later!
2. Identify the right problem
What may appear like the problem, could be one of many observable results of a deeper underlying problem. To identify the 'right' or 'true' problem, we need to delve into it. This method is often called "Root Cause Analysis".
There are many ways of conducting a Root Cause Analysis, but the easiest and most pragmatic way is to use the Five Whys Analysis tactic.
Simply put, asking "why?" at least five times will lead you to the real problem. Solving this root problem subsequently solves all of the surface problems associated with it.
3. Come up with ideas to solve the problem
What normally follows identifying the right problem is a flurry of ideas. This usually takes the form of blurting them out at each other - but there are better, more structured ways to capture ideas.
Generating ideas in a structured way gives you time and space to think, as well as building on other's ideas. The result means more thorough and refined ideas, over a back of the napkin sketch that the loudest person in the room decides is the best thing to do.
Idea generation tactics for problem solving:
- Mind Map - Get your brain on to paper, so you can start to form ideas for the methods below.
- Crazy Eights - Eight ideas in eight minutes
- Reverse Brainstorm - Come up with ways to make the problem worse, then reverse it to get the solution
- Round Robin - Generate an idea, then have the person next to you build on it.
- Storyboard - Turn your idea into a sequence of events to understand how it might actually work in reality.
Once you have a suite of ideas, next you will want to review together with some evaluative tactics.
4. Evaluate the ideas to ensure they're robust
Once you have a shortlist of ideas - it can be tempting to go with the one that appears most promising. If time is of the essence, and it's low risk - it might be the right call to just try it out.
However, for solutions that may be more costly or complicated - it's vital to evaluate your ideas. Kick the tyres so to speak.
Evaluating ideas gives you the confidence that your promising idea truly is promising, and is worthy of taking forward to the next stage: prototyping and implementing.
Evaluation tactics for ideas:
- Idea Beetle - a set of questions that help you assess if your idea is robust before you progress with it
- Rose, Thorn, Bud - a way to review the good, bad and potential of an idea
- SWOT Analysis - articulate an idea's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities or threats
Now you should have one or two (or more!) evaluated, robust and promising ideas that you want to try out to solve the problem.
Whether you need to work out how to prototype and test the idea, or go ahead and implement the solution right away - you need a plan.
To work out a plan, use the Sticky Steps tactic, which mentally starts you at having the solution implemented or prototype tested, then work backwards to today in order to see what steps you need to take.
Once you have a solid plan, create accountability by creating a list of tasks to do, and assigning them to people with a deadline. You can do this with the Who, What, When tactic.