Basorun Adebayo

INTRODUCTION We all dream of a life without any tensions or irritations, but that is wishful thinking to say the least; for what is life without challenges, risks, growth and aspirations? This concept of ups and downs is illustrated perfectly by our heart rates on an oximeter. Showing the rising and dipping that is essential for life to be sustained. We believe that problems are essential for growth although it may seem a bit hard to bear with at time, but it is only natural to place a premium on achievements made during such enduring times. Asma Mustafa Khan in an attempt to explain the phenomenon of growth used childbirth as a prime example of this concept. She enthused that the struggle of nine months and all the emotional and physical changes that come with it make it one of the most rewarding experiences of life. Similarly, the case of the oyster and the pearl comes to mind. When the speck of sand enters the mantle of the oyster, it is irritable at first and the oyster battles to get rid of it. However, after a long process, a beautiful pearl is formed. A pearl that would have never come into existence without the irritation caused by a simple grain of sand. Hardships usually prepare ordinary people for extraordinary successes. All the heroes we look up to, all the ”extraordinary people” who have left a mark on earth have lived lives adorned with problems. So, to achieve anything meaningful in life, you absolutely have to go through a struggle as you would never appropriately value anything handed to you on a silver platter. We live in a world that is drawn towards action towards fixing things, towards achieving results and doing that NOW! And as difficult as these problems might be, the more difficult task would be to choose the right problem to focus on in the first place. We live in a time when the value of time is becoming more and more expensive, with several factors competing for our time: texts and emails that need responses, several other tasks that need to be solved at the same time and other responsibilities craving for our attention and all of a sudden, all the time we thought we had in the world is gone and it seems like your day is not really your day, like your days agenda is somebody else’s. CHAPTER 1: AS A MATTER OF URGENCY Learning to effectively prioritize and save your time With the myriad of issues we face daily, it is important to find a working system to efficiently prioritize these problems. Effectively prioritizing is one of the most important skills you would need to learn in organizing your mind and time. There is a great tendency to give equal weight to everything, to all the tasks you have to fulfill and especially when you are just starting out you find that there are a lot of different tasks to fulfill at home, in your business or work etc. and in all this can be very difficult to fit it all in to the limited time we have. You would have to realize that the more things you do, the more things you would find to do and that you simply cannot do everything. The following steps are significant in the construction of this framework 1. Run a problem assessment test: In the face of such complexities, it is important to take a step back and obtain a full view of the problems being faced and develop a clear statement of the problems that prevent the achievement of whatever goals or objectives you have in mind. Provide a data-rich evidence of the scale and extent of the problem and identify the causes of the problem. Furthermore, assess the implications of the current problem and try to forecast the possibility of any further problems emerging. Gather as much information i.e. qualitative and quantitative as is necessary on the optimization of the resources available to solve the problems and hence identify the most urgent or biggest problem. This would help to keep first things first. This assessment would determine whether the issues on ground can be solved by you or if they would need to be outsourced or shelved for the moment. 2. Stop prioritizing easy: A lot of times when we look at our to-do lists, for those of us who have one, we tend to work towards the easy things feeling like getting those tasks of the list would build up some momentum and get them into the day when in reality this causes them to be less likely to actually do the things that count. This is characterized by feeling busy but not actually being busy. Time seems to be used but with some proper assessment it becomes obvious that nothing has really been done. Just because there is something easy to do doesn’t mean that they must be done today. I would rather you prioritize things that would make significant steps towards the solution of the entire problem. Prioritize progress over easy. Look out for things that would really progress you towards solving the problem. This would help you build real momentum. 3. Realize the difference between important and urgent: Important would mean something that is worthy of note or consideration, especially for its interest, value or relevance. Urgent on the other hand means something that requires immediate attention. I would encourage you to keep a time journal and itemize the time spent on issues. Check for how often you attend to urgent things. The more urgent things you have in your life, the less planning you have done. If you always seem to react instead of respond, there is an obvious time lag, making problem solving inefficient. Differentiate the things you absolutely must do regardless of whatever else is happening, the things you should do even though you cannot absolutely guarantee that you would be able to do, the things you could do if there is time, and finally the things you cannot do at all. To help with this comparison, cross examine the activities with their possible consequences. If the consequences are dire then the activities fall under the MUST DO category; if they are inconvenient then this task falls under the SHOULD DO category; and if the consequences aren’t really a big deal then the task can fall under the COULD DO or CANNOT DO category and for tasks in this category, learn to say NO without feeling guilty because saying NO to such a task would mean you are able to say yes to a more important task. You need to be objective enough to determine the extent to which a particular issue on the list of several problems to be solved would affect you from producing results. This would help focus and appropriately manage the available resources on what really matters. CHAPTER 2: PRETTY EASY FIX Creating a problem-solving system that works With the ever-increasing complexity of the world we live in and the seeming vulnerability of businesses to a regular onslaught of problems, it is required of individuals looking to be gainfully employed or to live a fulfilling life to develop effective problem-solving techniques that would consume as little resources as possible and yet give as effective a solution as possible. These techniques help individuals and organizations to exert a level of control to their immediate environment as they are able to identify things that need to be changed and figure out things that need to be done to create the desired outcome. This forms the basis of all inventions, social and cultural evolution and the basis for market-based economics. It forms the foundation for continuous improvement, communication and learning. Problem-solving should however not be limited to fixing “broken parts” of a previously working system. It also includes diagnosing reasons why the current state of affairs is the way it is and the factors and forces influencing it while developing approaches and alternatives to influence change and observing the impact of those actions on the system. It usually requires a set of skills and methods that contribute to the overall effectiveness of influencing change and determine the level of problem complexity that can be addressed. We as humans learn from a very early age how to solve varying complexities of problems. For example, how to eat, or making coordinated movements and communication; and as a person grows, these skills are refined, matured and become more sophisticated enabling them solve more difficult problems. Taking a leaf from Ed Muzio, author of the book Making Work Great, simple problems would require simple solutions. For example, if your shoe is untied, you simply bend over and tie them again. Pretty straight-forward right. However, what if you have a more complex problem? Say you have a customer care center is overwhelmed with calls and you are trying to improve the response time to enquiries made by your clients, you might call it a simple problem at first and assume a simple solution. Let’s implement some training, they can take the calls faster and catch. This would improve their response time. This would create a coverage problem as the customer care representatives would be taken off the floor. Another simple problem, right? Let’s include some overtime, but of course that would create a budget problem. When you treat a complex problem like a simple problem you are likely to get caught up in a loop where every solution creates another problem. To avoid that, it is essential to implement a stepwise process that would benefit the whole organization as thoroughly as possible. 1. Problem Definition: Defining a problem is a deceptively simple task – what at first glance seems to be the problem is often merely a symptom of a far larger problem. It is necessary to open a problem up; presenting it in a way that can be examined from a number of angles as well as helping to define the wider context and associated issues involved. This is particularly effective when trying to focus a team of people on the key problems at hand. Problem definition helps to introduce a small set of key criteria by which an issue can be articulated and assessed, giving a standardized method of comparing several different problems which might seem to be very different on the surface. Taking the customer service center for instance, what exactly is the problem? Is it the number of calls, the duration of the calls or something to do with the content of the calls? Answering this question would lead to the next step in the problem-solving process 2. Data Collection: This is a process of gathering and measuring information on variables of interest, in an established systematic fashion that enables one to answer stated research questions and evaluate outcomes. It basically answers the question of what exactly is going on. If we are thinking of number of calls, we plot of graph of number of calls over a period to ascertain when exactly that number spiked. 3. Cause Analysis: Once sufficient data has been obtained, it is highly probable that there is an unrecognizable mess on your hands that provides no direction. In medicine for example, it is easy to understand the difference between treating a symptom and curing the disease or condition. A broken wrist for example hurts, but a painkiller would only take away the symptoms and an entirely different treatment would be needed to heal the bones properly. Cause analysis is a popular and often used technique that helps answer the question of why the problem occurred in the first place. It seeks to identify the origin of the problem using a specific set of steps with associated tools to find the primary cause of the problem, so that you can: a. Determine what happened b. Determine why it happened c. Figure out what to do to ensure it does not repeat itself. The cause analysis usually assumes that the events are interrelated and that an action in one area triggered a reaction in another area and so on. It investigates the patterns of negative effects finding hidden flaws in the system and discovering specific actions that contributed to the problem. This often translates to a problem having more than one root cause. Still referring to our customer service center situation, let us assume the data collected revealed that the spike in number of calls received was as a result of the release of a new product by the company and customers were simply calling in to make enquiries about that product. Now we are making some headway 4. The next step is Solution Planning Implementation. This is the process of not just developing a strategic plan that aims to accomplish the organization’s goals but also defining the methods required to bring this plan to life. To execute the objectives outlined in the plan you would need to define how you would implement each aspect, from funding and personnel to organization and deliverables. Typically, this plan outlines the resources, assumptions, short- and long-term outcomes, roles and responsibilities and budget. This usually is a lot of work and can take quite some time to not just plan a solution but to implement it. But fortunately, at this point we have identified the real problem so effort is not being wasted. Taking our customer care center problem again for instance, we found out that the calls increased due to the new product released. To cut down on those calls coming in we could decide to let out a checklist of the first five things the customer needs to know about the product and how it works. After doing this for a while, we move on to the next step. 5. Evaluation of effects: Here we assess the changes that can be attributed to a particular intervention. It helps to show how well the proffered solution has worked and if there would be a need for a revision of the methods employed in solving the problem or not. This involves a counterfactual analysis that compares what actually happened and what would have happened in the absence of the intervention. This evaluation process aims to answer the cause and effect question, looking for changes in outcome that are directly attributable to a program. Taking our case study in view, we collect some more data after the introduction of the product checklist and compare with the previously collected data. If it shows that the call numbers went u again, then we go back to the drawing board. On the other hand, if it worked i.e. the call numbers dropped, we move on to the next step which is 6. Standardization: This aims to determine the extent to which the solution can be used in other areas. We check if we can use this solution for other products, in other parts of the organization. Basically, anything we can do to widely adopt the learning that we have worked to get. 7. Process Evaluation: After standardization, we try to learn something from the work that has been done. Before the solution was proffered, there were obviously a few people that knew about the problem. But overtime, putting a solution in place certainly took a group. We try to get this group together and try to itemize how we dealt with solving the problem, what did we do well, what could we have done better and we take these learnings and move forward with them so as to be that much better at solving future problems. CONCLUSION - “Sufficient unto a day is the evil therein” – An aphorism which appears in the Gospel according to Matthew, chapter 6, verse 34 highlights the fact that as long as we are alive and breathing, there would always be some issues that we would be presented with which we would have surmount. Wisdom demands that we as much as possible keep the horse before the cart and address the most pressing of the issues first while also trying to provide sustainable and efficient solutions to these problems as they arise.