Sense and decide
Three Definitions First
Name the problem three ways before anyone proposes a fix
Before the team discusses solutions, it writes at least three different statements of what the problem is. Each statement points to different evidence and different fixes.
Borrowed from management researcher Paul Nutt's studies of how managers in hundreds of organizations actually made decisions, and why about half of those decisions failed. Read the original source.
One session · Minutes to start · Anyone on the team can start it · Start here for this problem
Try this first
Ask the group, "What else could this problem be?" Do not move on until there are three different answers on the board.
Use it when
The team named the problem in the first five minutes and has been solving that version ever since.
Skip it when
The problem is well understood and the team has solved it many times with good results. Also skip it in an emergency, when acting now matters more than acting on the best definition.
How to introduce it
Before anyone proposes a fix, ask everyone to write down what they think the problem actually is. Put the answers side by side and push until there are at least three that differ in a real way. For example, rising turnover could be a pay problem, a manager problem, or a workload problem. Each of those sends the team to look at different evidence. Only then choose which definitions to test.
How to show up
Hold back your own definition until the others are on the board. Treat the first definition as one option among several, including yours and any the AI offered. When two definitions are the same idea in different words, say so and ask for another.
How long it takes
Ten to twenty minutes at the start of a problem-solving session.
What makes it hard
Teams feel they already know what the problem is, so the step feels slow. People also offer the first definition again in different words. An AI asked "what else could this be?" tends to return the standard answers for that kind of problem, so treat its list as a starting point.
What it looks like when it's working
The team finds a definition it had not considered, and at least some of the time it ends up testing something other than its first guess. If all three definitions lead to the same fix, the team has not widened the question.
How long until it sticks
Expect four or five uses before people ask "what else could this be?" on their own.
How you know it stuck
Problem statements arrive with alternatives attached, and someone asks for them when they don't.
The idea behind it
The way a team names a problem decides what evidence it looks at and which solutions seem sensible. When the first name is wrong, the work built on it goes wrong too, and nobody goes back to check the name.
Where it comes from
Research basis. Paul Nutt studied 356 decisions in medium and large organizations in the United States and Canada. About half of them failed, meaning they were not fully used or did not last. Most decisions started from one person's preferred idea, and about two-thirds considered only one option. Decisions that started by agreeing on the goal, and that looked at more than one option, succeeded more often. In Nutt's study, success rose from about 56% to about 70% when decision makers considered several options instead of one. This is a study of real decisions, not an experiment, so it shows the two go together, not that one causes the other. Laboratory research on fixation adds that designers shown an example solution keep copying its features, even after being told those features are flawed.
Evidence
Jansson and Smith, Design fixation, Design Studies (1991)
Also fits: The group lands on the first answer, often the AI's