Solving Problems for a Living

If you're a knowledge worker, what's your deliverable?

I began my business 35 years ago – early August 1989. That means I've been doing “this” for more than a third of a century! Makes me feel old, yet explains my gray hairs...

But what is “this”?

What's Your Deliverable?

Many years ago, someone – perhaps a consultant, perhaps a referral source – asked, “Todd, what's your deliverable?” I thought for a moment and could only come up with “My deliverable is the service we provide to a client.” Then he said something that stuck with me, “Todd, everyone has a deliverable. What's yours?”

I thought about this question and how to answer it. We help our clients improve their business systems – the systems that actually run the business and get things done. Business systems are a combination of People, Process, and Technology, taken together. Of these three elements, only one – People – is tangible. We work to improve the other two – basically, flowchart symbols (Process), and bits and bytes (Technology) – and they are both intangible. I don't think two intangibles are what my acquaintance had in mind as a deliverable.

It took a while for it to dawn on me – our clients don't hire us just for a service, they hire us to perform a service that can solve a business system problem they're experiencing. Hence, Todd Herman Associates (THA) delivers “Solved Problems” to our clients.

Some Problem-Solving Tips

Having delivered “Solved Problems” for over 35 years, my associates and I have learned some things about solving problems. Here are a few of them.

1. Solve the Right Problem – Ask lots of questions, and get clear with the client on the problem they want to solve – what the problem is, what pains it is causing employees or customers, how much the pains hurt, and what they've already done to try to solve it. Seems obvious, yet I'm amazed at how many sales reps ask me about my problems in a certain area and then, once I tell them, they launch into a canned response that doesn't address my problem.
2. Identify the Problem's Root Cause – Use the Five Why's method to drill down to the root cause by first identifying the problem and asking client personnel actually experiencing the problem “why” they think the problem exists, then successively asking “why” four more times, framing each question in response to the previous answer. You'll know you've reached the root cause when asking “why” no longer produces valuable responses.
3. Use Structured Brainstorming – Despite what you may think, the best brainstorming is actually well-structured. For years, we've used a flipchart with Post-It Notes and Sharpies to lead group discussions identifying the SIPOC elements – Supplier, Input, Process, Output, and Customer – of a process. While this seems tedious, it does flush out details otherwise overlooked – and producing a “Wall of Knowledge” is critically important in capturing and distilling the key specific requirements for a new system.
4. Apply Systems Thinking – Systems Thinking is the ability to understand and visualize how something moves through a process. Ask “What's next?” to trace through the downstream tasks. Ask “What preceded this?” to follow things upstream.
5. Document Who–Do–When – As you apply Systems Thinking, you will learn the person who performs a task and where in the process timeline it occurs. Document that, so you can specify WWDWBW – Who Will Do What By When – in your proposed solution.
6. Think By Doodling – While the grown-up word for this is “Mind Mapping,” the technique is the same. This method lets you lay out and structure your thoughts so you can experiment with concepts, ideas, and solutions. Begin with the problem description at the center of your paper or screen, then draw branches off that to list possible root causes, and finally draw branches off causes to list possible solutions. Continue this process until you have a list of possible solutions for each major root cause.
7. Think Using Bullet Points or Outlines – I tell my staff they can never go wrong if they bring something to me in the form of bullet points or outlines. Why? Because organizing things this way lets me quickly see how well they've defined an issue or proposed a recommendation – if they can't quickly communicate their ideas to me, their ideas still need work.
8. Think Via Tables – I also tell my staff they can never go wrong if they send me something in table format. Why? Because a table allows you to do two important things:

• Eliminate repeated words and deadwood, getting to the heart of what needs to be communicated. This technique is called Information Mapping, which I discuss in “13 Tips for Better Business Writing.”
• Test the completeness of your thinking to ensure you address the same key points in all situations. For example, use a five-column table to list product usage situations in the first column, and use the remaining columns to indicate the relevance – High, Medium, Low – of, say, four key product attributes in each situation.

9. Focus on “Better” and Not “Best” – Prospects may say they want “The Best” solution, yet they really mean “Something that's better than what I have now, that fits within my budget, and that can be implemented with my existing staff within x months.”

• Finding the best way to pack objects in a knapsack is harder than it seems, because it is a simple example of hard-to-solve optimization problems studied by computer scientists and mathematicians.
• Business persons want, in the words of one client, “Progress, Not Perfection.”

10. refine, Refine, REFINE! – Keep circling back and reviewing your proposed solution and how you present this...and do this until things make perfect sense to you and others! While you will go through several drafts, the end result will be worth it. Clients are busy people, so they appreciate deliverables they can quickly understand.

Thirty-Five Years of “Solved Problems”

These ten tips – and a few others we keep to ourselves – are how we've delivered solutions to our clients for three and a half decades. Over this time, we've solved numerous problems, and we've compiled a varied portfolio you can peruse. Perhaps you see your problem among these, perhaps not – regardless, I'm always happy to discuss your needs and how we might be able to help.

Sincerely,

Todd L. Herman

PS – Take a look at our most recent videos on Navigating Challenges – Using a Structured Problem-Solving Process and Navigating Challenges – Applying Problem-Solving Tools.