Innatecauseeffectanalysis

Highly effective problem-solvers are capable of highly complex cognition to do cause-effect analysis, with the goal not to complicate the situation, but to figure out premium solutions.

Contemporary society is getting more and more complex due to exponential growth of information and frequent disruptions. Problem-solving in the majority of organizations today is woefully inadequate, as people often try to fix the wrong cause of problems but the real issues still exist and are getting worse. Or people ignore the problems around us because they can't figure out the exact cause and effect so the solutions are vague, variable or unknown. 

In many circumstances, people fix the issues, but the symptoms continue to get back, so they stop the effort. But their ignorance perhaps becomes the pain and causes more serious issues later on. How to diagnose the root causes and solve problems effectively?

A transparent reflection of cause and effects which need improved business capability and management effectiveness is the key thing you need: Running business is an iterative problem-solving continuum. When the business gets stagnated, with culture inertia, people disengagement, lack of synergy, the management needs to detect the symptoms of performance suffering when productivity is low and synergy is missing, and figure out the root causes: Is it caused by silos=lack of cross-functional understanding of things and people? Is it caused by bureaucracy = process inefficiency? Bottleneck = dissonance between different layers of management? Etc. Trying to fix the wrong cause of a problem will waste time and resources, increase anxiety, and cause chaos.

When different shareholders push the business to different directions, change gets stuck and digital transformation is stalled. When people are not working via the system to solve the real problems but play the system to stifle change, they are problem-makers; when people lack the right information to make effective decisions and lack accountability to get the work done on-value, on-time, they become part of problems. When continuously solving the wrong problems, it’s no surprise that you are at a state of problem-solving impasse. Miscommunication, misunderstanding, or simply wrong people put in the wrong position to solve the wrong problems becomes the very causes of numerous problems that are ever-evolving.

Insight is the understanding of a specific cause and effect in a specific context: Insight is the ability to perceive clearly or deeply penetration of situations by looking around the corner or seeing underneath. From a problem-solving perspective, too often people may take the easy path, think and work at a superficial level or blindly follow others rather than spend the time on the understanding of what is going on underneath. Insight is the most wanted and abstracted knowledge to gain the understanding of a specific cause and effect in a specific context, do the objective analysis into the root cause of a problem, or figure out the core issues of a situation which leads to resolution.

In dynamic digital business environments, there must be a capacity to respond to new and emerging opportunities and to create new opportunities. It’s not the acquisition of knowledge that makes you a great problem-solver. It is the desire to acquire and apply that knowledge, transform into the insight that will make you more effective for solving various complex issues today. Keep in mind, more often than not, the logic behind problem-solving is not so linear today, applying techniques of linear mathematics logic to the world very quickly, come up against insurmountable difficulties, cause confusion and dysfunctional processes or systems. Insight is an understanding of cause and effect based on the identification of relationships and behaviors within a model, context, or scenario, identify root causes, and solve real issues or perhaps the chains of relevant problems effectively.

A simple variable can be both cause and effect as the digital ecosystem is complex and volatile, being digital is the state of interconnectivity: Digital organization is complex, it becomes complex if things do interact, particularly in the case of nonlinear processes and interactions. You can't separate things properly or you cannot predict the actual effect of interactions straightforwardly. Because of interconnectivity and the many potential options in a complex system, a small effect in one place can cause a cascade of events that produce a nonlinear big impact. System thinking helps to understand the interrelation between parts and the whole, and define how to perceive problems objectively.

It’s not so effective to use linear logic to understand highly complex, nonlinear cause-effect relationship scenarios to solve complex business problems. It’s important to leverage System principles to understand the interconnectivity and do an in-depth cause-effect analysis. The predictive “cause and effect” in system dynamics can include nonlinear cause and effect models, predict outcomes, find the factors involved in the “incorrect" outcome; build a hypothetical equation that describes your "incorrect" outcome. See how changing any getting better or worsens that outcome. Effective problem-solvers can apply systems thinking, develop nonlinear business problem-solving scenarios, simplify complicated things, and deal with uncertainty smoothly.

A problem often leads to opportunities because they challenge us to address something that is not working before. Highly effective problem-solvers are capable of highly complex cognition to do cause-effect analysis, with the goals not to complicate the situation, but to simplify and optimize problems on hand via understanding the interconnectivity between issues, digging through the root cause, creating multiple pathways via interactions, associations, and expansions, etc, in order to solve them effectively and make cohesive changes.

Posted in: Enterprise Capability,Problem Solving