My thoughts while developing Solve Guide.
by Lewis
When I think of issues, I think of that scene from Malcom in the Middle where Lois asks Hal to replace a lightbulb.
When you come home, you just want to turn on the lights and get about your business. But one things leads to the next and pretty soon you’re changing your transmission fluid, not really sure how you got there.
When I first saw that scene, I remember thinking, “But. . .you’ve got the lightbulb in your hand! Just go change it, THEN fix the shelf”.
Fundamentally this is an attention management problem. All sorts of sophisticated systems have been developed to help people and teams stay focused and reward themselves for FINISHING tasks rather than starting new ones. Here are some great reads on the topic:
Issues in Solve Guide are the largest circle in the venn diagram that contains references to:
Seeds: The original articulation of dissatisfaction. These are useful to hang-on to in order to test your ultimate solutions, however they are often distracting when working through an issue.
Symptoms: The aspects of the issue that manifest themselves. This is how you know you really have an issue at all. They are also how you will be able to tell if you’ve really made the issue go away.
Facts: The feelings, observations, interpretations and needs relevant to the issue and its context.
Root Issue: The single most fundamental source of the largest share of symptoms that you can influence.
Root Theory: The relationship between Root Issues for complex Issues
Hypothesis: This one is well-known to wideners and maybe less so to narrowers. Hypothesis are possible Root Issues and Root Theories that you explore to find the most impactful Root Issues. Great song writters have to write 100’s of songs to just come up with on all-time classic. Hypothesis are all those other songs.
Solutions: Potential paths to make the symptoms created by your choosen Root Issue go away.
Solve: Solve is the verb form of a choosen solution. The solve is the act of making the symptoms go away. Solves are how we test our ability to understand reality and ourselves.
The “seed” is how I refer to the initial “disturbance in the force” feeling that you experience that motivates you to notice or articulate an issue. Sometimes it’s a symptom, sometimes it’s a mood, sometimes it’s a missing tool or ingredient. Sometimes it’s the final negative outcome of a challenge that you thought you had under control. When I sense these disturbances in the force I try to put them in the following format:
I feel ____, when I see ______, because I think it means _________.
When I’m going fast, I often times will say:
I feel bad, when I see this, because I think it means ______.
The blank lets me get to all the exaggerated and unhelpful things I may be feeling in the moment the seed bubbles to the surface.
I see seeds and symptoms as the inverse of OKR’s objectives and key results. They symptoms of the issue you are experiencing are measureable outcomes that help you tell whether the issue is still happening or not. Sometimes there isn’t a strong link between the two and you have to simply PICK some symptoms that you will choose to accept as proxies for whether an issue is still happening or not. In any well-formed seed, there is at least one symptom in the shape of the initial feeling that surfaced with the seed.
Facts are simple statements that can be proven, unproven, suspect or false. Facts are often useful when you aren’t making much progress finding the root issue directly. Especially when you are solving issues with others, it can be critical to go backwards and make sure you agree on the fundamental facts that each of you are using to describe the issue.
The root issue is a combination of two things:
There are many ways to get to the root issue. Ideanote has a great guide on negative brainstorming.
tags: reference - Issues