Problem Restatement

EXERCISE 2: Group Analysis of Risky Sports

Recruit five to seven people to participate in this exercise.

Give each individual the following list of eight sports.

Motorcycle racing

Horse racing

Sky diving

Mountain climbing

Boxing

Scuba diving

College football

Hang gliding

Each individual, working alone, ranks the sports according to the danger of injury to the participant.

When all members of the group have completed their individual rankings, the group assembles and, working together, again ranks the eight sports, producing a consensus list.

The book uses the Sample Grading Matrix for Ranking Sports Risks on page 315 to compare the group’s consensus list with the individual rankings. That matrix is not included here, so this exercise alone does not provide the data needed to judge accuracy.

With a suitable reference ranking, compare the group result with the individual results. Did discussion improve the judgments, or did it lead the group away from a more accurate individual assessment?

Training in group process can help members recognize patterns that obstruct discussion and learn ways to work together more effectively.

Individual mind-sets, conflicts over authority, domination by a clique, and lack of focus can undermine a group, alongside the individual thinking habits discussed in Chapter 1 of the book. These interactions within the group tend to divide and confuse its members and to defeat their common purpose.

This is where structuring analysis can help, by organizing in a sensible, informative way the problem being analyzed. Structuring group analysis facilitates the exchange of ideas and the examination of alternatives that are necessary for building a consensus. Because group analysis tends to jump erratically from one topic to another as members press for acceptance of competing ideas, a principal beneficial effect of structuring is to help the group perceive the problem’s full dimensions, to focus its attention on individual aspects of the problem, and to keep track of where the group is in the analytic process.

A shared analytic structure gives members a way to compare ideas, examine alternatives, and track the questions that remain unresolved.

3. Problem Restatement

Consider a man who found water on his blanket and thought his water bed was leaking. He defined the problem as “How can I fix the leak?” His analysis was guided by that definition—by that statement of the problem. As it turned out, he had defined the problem incorrectly. He should have asked, “What is the source of the water on my blanket?” He should have made a distinction between the problem and its symptoms. Had he done so, his analysis would probably have considered alternative sources and revealed the source to be not the water bed but a leaky drain in an upstairs bathroom. How we define a problem usually determines how we analyze it. It sends us in a particular direction. The direction we take shapes which solutions we consider and which we overlook.

We frequently discover, based on information and perceptions gained midway through the analysis, that the initial problem statement was far off the mark. We can find examples all around us of people whose narrow definition of a problem caused their analysis to be shortsighted, overlooking alternative and possibly more beneficial solutions. Take the case of two parents concerned about their teenage son’s poor grades in high school.

FATHER: “He just doesn’t apply himself.”

MOTHER: “I know. He really isn’t interested. His mind wanders.”

FATHER: “I’m tired of harping about it all the time.”

MOTHER: “Me, too. It doesn’t seem to have any effect.”

FATHER: “Maybe he needs tutoring in how to study.”

MOTHER: “Lord knows it wouldn’t hurt. He has terrible study habits.”

FATHER: “I’ll call the school tomorrow and arrange something.”

MOTHER: “Good. I’m sure it will help him.”

The parents are pleased. They have defined the problem, arrived at a solution, and are taking corrective action. But are “lack of interest” and a “wandering mind” really the core problem? Will tutoring the son in how to study resolve it? Perhaps. But the parents may be addressing only symptoms of a deeper problem. Chances are the son himself doesn’t know what the problem is. He knows only that he isn’t motivated to study. But why isn’t he? What is the real problem?

Here’s another example:

The parking lot outside an office building is jammed with workers’ cars. Management decide to tackle the problem, so they convene a working group and charge it with devising different ways to redesign the parking lot to hold more cars. The working group does its job, coming up with half a dozen different ways to increase the lot’s capacity.

In this case, management defined the problem as how to increase the lot’s capacity, and the solutions they sought were accordingly restricted to that statement of the problem. Nothing wrong with that, is there? After all, the lot is jammed. Obviously, more parking space is needed.

But there are other ways to view (state) the problem, such as how to reduce the number of cars in the parking lot. (Options for doing that might be carpooling, moving elements of the company to other locations, and eliminating jobs to reduce the number of employees.)