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Stop Guessing - Coggle Diagram
Stop Guessing
STOP GUESSING
When you’re facing a problem of moderate difficulty, there
may be something like 50 potential root causes.
Then you’ve got hard problems. These are the kinds of problems that might have hundreds or thousands of potential causes. The actual root cause is obscure or hidden. Shearing pipes in your water pipes might be due to invasive corrosive bacteria introduced at the local river. Your trouble sleeping might be caused by an allergy to yellow-6 dye in your macaroni. You are unlikely to be able to guess the causes to these, and trying to guess wastes a lot of time.
If you get from someone a list of 10 “potential” root causes, they don’t know what’s happening. If you’ve come up with 200, you have no idea at all what’s happening
For example, consider a classic problem-solving methodology such as the PackCorp Scientific Approach, which was popular in the 1960s and was one of the first to introduce rigorous problem definitions.
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The Fault Tree Analysis for Boeing’s 747, which lists known potential causes of catastrophic in-flight failure, has thousands of elements.
Remember, your brain is going to guess. When these guesses happen, recognize them for what they are and then let them roll off you like rain. If you’re really struggling to let them go, write them down on a piece of paper and stick it in an envelope or a box. You can look at it later to see how close you got.
Embrace Your Ignorance
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A great problem-solver will gently challenge the organization rather than individuals, and have the humility to lead by example, by demonstrating their ignorance.
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Smell the Problem
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Great problem solvers develop the questions that they want to answer before they go about collecting information and data, rather than depending on whatever data streams they see. They grab the signal, not the noise.