Problem Restatement (Reframing the Problem)

EXERCISE 3 Algona Pollution I

Consider the following scenario from Jones’s problem-restatement exercise.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has discovered volatile organic compounds in effluents from a processing plant of the Algona Fertilizer Company in Algona, Iowa. These toxic waste products bypass the city of Algona but are carried into the East Fork Des Moines River, a tributary that feeds into Saylorville Lake, the principal source of water for Des Moines, a city of more than 300,000 people. The Des Moines city council, through news media and political channels, is putting enormous public pressure on state and federal environmental agencies to shut down the Algona plant. Environmental action groups, with full media coverage, demonstrated yesterday in front of the Iowa governor’s mansion demanding immediate closure of the plant. Local TV news and talk shows are beginning to focus on the issue. The company’s executive board has convened an emergency working group to consider what the company should do.

Before proceeding, write down what you think “the problem” is. Keep that first answer so you can compare it with what you later think “the problem” is.

BEFORE CONTINUING, WRITE DOWN WHAT THE PROBLEM IS.

As you may have discovered, there’s more than just one problem here, because the problem changes depending on whose perspective or self-interest we consider. Here’s a sampling of perspectives on the Algona pollution problem:

• Company management
• Company employees
• Company union management
• Company union members
• Residents of Algona
• Residents of Des Moines
• News media of Des Moines
• National news media
• The Des Moines city council
• The governor of Iowa
• The opposing political groups
• The Iowa state legislature
• People who make recreational use of the affected waterways
• Farmers who irrigate from the affected waterways
• Federal environmental authorities
• State environmental authorities
• Environmental action groups
• Other fertilizer companies in the Des Moines area
• Other fertilizer companies in Iowa
• Other fertilizer companies in the United States

Every problem, from major ones, such as abortion and national health care, to mundane ones, such as an overdrawn checking account, can be viewed from multiple conflicting perspectives. And what drives these differing perspectives? Biases and mind-sets, those unseen killers of objective truth, determine our perspective of any problem. That perspective in turn drives our analysis, our conclusions, and ultimately our recommendations. Another constraint is that the moment we define a problem our thinking about it quickly narrows considerably. It’s those mental traits again: patterning, focusing, seeking explanations, looking for supportive evidence, and so on.

Given the tremendous influence of biases on our thinking, it makes good sense at the outset of the problem-solving process (before we begin seriously analyzing the problem) to deliberately strive to identify and examine our biases as they relate to the problem at hand. What we learn may surprise us and put us on the track to solutions.

In my experience, identifying our own biases through introspection is difficult. We may not notice the assumptions that make a particular framing seem natural. It helps to use a method that exposes alternatives rather than relying only on our ability to recognize a bias directly.

So if identifying our biases through introspection is impracticable, what are we to do? How are we to cope with these mental traits when defining a problem?

I recommend an indirect approach, which is to restate (redefine) the problem in as many different ways as we can think of. We simply shift our mental gears into a divergent mode (more easily said than done, I realize) and start pumping out restatements without evaluating them. The key here, as in all divergent thinking (discussed in Chapter 5), is letting the ideas flow freely, without attempting to justify them.

The aim of problem restatement is to broaden our perspective of a problem, helping us to identify the central issues and alternative solutions and increasing the chance that the outcome our analysis produces will fully, not partially, resolve the problem.

Sometimes restating the problem is difficult because the original statement was poorly articulated. All the more reason, then, to more clearly define it.

A five- or ten-minute restatement session can expose assumptions and reveal that several problems have been bundled together. Sometimes a new framing suggests a solution; often it clarifies what needs analysis. Writing the alternatives makes them easier to compare and can prevent substantial work on an ill-defined question.

If, as is often the case, we are analyzing a problem for someone else’s benefit, it is best to generate the problem restatements in that person’s presence. Doing so in an open discussion will reveal our consumer’s prime concerns and what he or she considers to be the key issues. This will facilitate reaching agreement at the start concerning what the problem is and what our analysis will aim to find out.

Most important of all, restatements should, whenever possible, be put into writing so we—and our consumer, if the problem is owned by someone else—can study them. A record copy of the agreed-upon problem statement should be retained for reference as our analysis proceeds. Retaining it not only enables us to check from time to time to see if our analysis is on target, it also offers us protection in case our consumer complains afterward that we addressed the wrong problem. Keep in mind, however, that the goal of problem restatement is to expand our thinking about the problem, not to solve it.