“That’s an interesting approach. What other ways did you consider?” the Professor asked the student working through a problem at the blackboard. There were probably ten of us seniors in this Advanced Systems class and the material was difficult, so we were all pretty comfortable flailing in front of each other.
The student up front was a bit confused at the question. We all were.
Professor Brown spoke to everyone in the room, with a note of surprise in his voice. “Wait… nobody told you this yet? How did you all make it this far? OK, I’ll explain:
Every problem has at least five ways you can solve it.
One way is the hardest and has the most steps, highest likelihood of an error, and takes the longest.
By contrast, one way is the easiest, with the fewest steps, making it both the fastest and least error-prone.
Before jumping into the first solution that comes to mind, think of two more; with three possible solutions, you stand a chance of ruling out the awful one and potentially stumbling into the elegant one.
Think of three different ways to solve a problem before starting your work.”
My worldview updated, right then. Like someone hit the refresh button.
There’s more than one way to skin a banana; there’s an easy way and a hard way. Hearing this spelled out so elegantly and practically, though, made it simple to change my approach to every problem.
Unexplored alternatives might have been the silver bullet when faced with an urgent problem. Fast decision making and pressure to deliver results need not compromise our best work.
Rapidly vetting three solutions gives people the chance to avoid disasters, discover elegance, and build confidence.
The brief below anchors a conversation I’ve had countless times over more than a decade with colleagues and friends alike. Use it with folks that need the reminder that elegant fast solutions come from taking a beat for some forethought.
Choose solutions
The first solution that comes to mind is rarely your best one.
Picture yourself taking a difficult math test, the final exam. You studied, you’re prepared.
Seated at a desk, you look over the test. It’s long: lots of problems, and they’re complicated but feel like they’re in your wheelhouse.
You dig in. At first, things feel obvious, you breeze through the first twenty minutes, checking work as you go. Things get tougher, and you skip past a couple to find and take care of the remaining easy wins.
Now, all that’s left are the tough ones, and there’s half an hour on the clock. You look at each one, think of a way to solve it, and race to finish. Some solutions are short, clean, and clear with only a few steps. Others are long, with each step compounding any mistakes. As you check work, you notice the longer ones contain a rounding error or some other issue, and go back and make fixes.
With a couple minutes to spare, you hand it in.
Rewind. You’re starting the hard problems.
One by one, you quickly think of three different ways to solve, choose the easiest, and chase it down. Now they’re all simple, fewer steps, easier to check, less room for error. More elegant.
With ten minutes to spare, you have a chance to give everything another once-over, and hand it in.
Choice needs options
What if all your solutions were the worst possible approach?
Unless you considered another option, you have no way of knowing.
Nobody comes up with the best, most elegant solution on the first try every time.
Over, under, around, and through: these are the ways to get past an obstacle. If you have a shovel, you don’t always have to dig - you might be able to use it as a lever, or stick it in the ground to get some height and jump over. Your tool is not the shovel, your tool is creativity in ways to use the shovel to get past the obstacle.
Don’t we want to be choosing solutions? To have a choice requires things to choose from. Nobody comes up with the best, most elegant solution on the first try every time, and often not on the second - definitely not me and almost certainly not you. Yet how often do we unthinkingly surrender to the tension to just jump into our first idea?
Getting good at solving problems is about learning how to look for the easy way.
Reacting or responding?
Teams get crunched to move fast, leading to hasty solutions without choices; when faced with a problem under pressure, one solution sounds promising, and we move on it. It’s natural. In reactive mode, formulating two other options feels like time wasted until we miss the mark and have to start over.
Respond to the challenge: pause, zoom out, zoom in.
Give yourself choices, and solve things better faster.
Backwards. What are the five most recent problems you’ve had to solve, and what options did you consider for each? You’ll quickly get a sense of how often you’re actually exploring options.
Forwards. Next time you’re vetting a solution, ask what two others were considered.
Loops. How can you get in the habit of very rapidly thinking of three solutions before choosing one? How can this work on an individual level, a team level, and an organizational level?
One problem. Five solutions.
Think of three, pick one, move forward. Do it fast.
Originally published on productbriefly.com
Making choices
How does one build the habit loop that provides better paths to choose?
Likewise, how do we create a team environment dynamic where this feels like it makes us quicker, rather than slower?
When we’re pressed for time, this all needs to move fast in order to move faster.
