Two things happen when you come face-to-face with a business conundrum. First, you panic a little, because all business problems are complex. There just seems to be an endless number of variables to keep track of. Second, you try to split the problem down into its basic parts. However, this is more of an art than a science.
Consider this: you’re a payroll company who wants to foster better relationships with your current partner base (insurance agents, accountants, etc.). How many steps does this take?
Tough question.
Often, it’s easier to answer a question like that with visualization rather than words. It’s like that old saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” When it comes to business planning and systems management, it really is true.
That’s what Tom Wujec explores in this TED talk about how to solve your company’s “wicked problem.” The exercise he designed to explain this process to people involves having them draw the process of making toast -- and here’s the catch -- with no words. Only images, and numbers if necessary.
There are a lot of important observations he pulls out of his experience doing the exercise with people. Here are a few:
So what are the lessons here for your small business? Well, maybe working one person at a time, each handing the product off to the next in line to make iterations, is not the best way to handle problem-solving. If your team works that way, there is a lot of "catching-up" to do just to understand what the first contributor did. That's a lot of lost time per individual.
Instead, getting a group together and having each person do their best individually, and then synthesizing the efforts into one, multi-viewpoint solution is the way to go. Your team ends up getting the benefits of collaboration without the wasted time spent explaining each decision they make as they make it. Instead, all the effort to compare and contrast viewpoints is compressed onto the end of process, where it's much easier to be objective about each idea's merit.
That saves you time in the long-run, and produces the best quality work.