Think Bigger - Solving broader business problems
I'm currently reading the book 'The Creative Problem Solver' by Ian Atkinson. The first problem-solving technique the book walks through is 'Think bigger'. In essence, its this:
"Take the problem you've been given, phrase it as a question, then step back to ask a bigger, broader question."
By answering the broader problem, you also allow for broader solutions. You are free of a small specific problem that could have a limited solution.
The other benefit of this approach is that you could solve multiple problems with your new solution or get to the root cause of the original problem.
I'm a fan of this thinking as it helps focus on the problem's root. It's similar to the 'five why's' technique, where you go up a level until you reach the route of the problem.
We are currently on a project where we used this technique. We were looking at a key page in a user journey and how we could get more people to take the desired action. This was our narrow, small specific problem.
But when we framed this as a question and started to ask 'why', we moved up the levels and ended up with the root of the problem. Once we could see the bigger problem, we had more scope for solutions. The new solution improved three key journeys for that audience and removed the need for the problematic page.
One of the big benefits of using this technique is that you can get to the actual business problem. If we hadn't used this technique and asked the five whys, we would have spent a lot of time and effort fixing something that wasn't really the problem.
We found the root of the problem and have three solutions to fix the bigger business problem. Using this tool helped us spend time and resources fixing the actual business problem.
This is technique one of twelve from the book. So far, I am loving it and can not wait to try out more of these tools.
