Seven Step Problem Solving (Problem Solving No. 3)

Hi, I'm Edward Muzio, CEO of Group Harmonics. I'm going to tell you about the “Seven Step Problem Solving”.

When your shoes are untied what do you do? You likely bend over and tie it. Simple Problem, Simple Solution.

What if the problem is not so simple?

What if your customer service center is overwhelmed with calls. Well! You might say: Simple Problem, Simple Solution!

With implementing some training, they can take the calls faster and catch up.

Of course the training will take them off the floor. Now you have a coverage problem, you can solve that by recruiting some overtime but of course the overtime creates a bunch of problems.

When you treat a complex problem like a simple one, you are likely to get caught in a loop; for every solution creates a new problem.

To avoid that dr. “Shoji Shiba” of the center for quality of management defined what he called the “Seven Step Problem Solving”, or “Seven Steps to Solve Your Problems” in a way that benefit the whole organization as thoroughly as possible.

The first step is “Definition”. Definition asks the question: "what is the problem really?"

So let's take our example to customer service center … Is the problem number of calls? Is the problem how long the calls are taking? Is the problem something about the content of the calls? What is the real problem? Until you know that, you can't go any further.

Now let's say in this case we decide actually the problem is the number of calls. There seems to be more calls than they used to be.

Now we move to step 2. Step 2 is “Data Collection”. Data Collection answers the question of what is going on? So if we are thinking about the number of calls let's look at the graph. Let's look at the number of calls over the time. Maybe we determine that YES in fact somewhere around January last year, the number of calls went up. Now we have some data.

Now we can move to step 3. Step 3 is “Cause Analysis”. Cause Analysis of course answers the question of why; What's going on here? So you might go back, up to this data, and we might say you know what? It turns out, right at the same time, we had a new product introduced, started shipping to the customer; and a lot of calls are about that product.

Now we are getting somewhere!

Now we are ready for step 4. Step 4 is “Solution Planning and Implementation”. Now that's a lot of work in one line of writing.

This can take quite some time, to plan a solution well and to implement it. But the good news is you have done your homework! You know you are working on the right thing! So it is worth the effort.

Now, once you've planned implementing the solution, let's say in our case we figured out we want to ship a new product check list (for the) Product that goes out … Or we are going to send the customer the top 5 things they should do first.

Maybe we think that will help them stop the need to call for help.

But we are not going to stop there. We're going to do that for a while and then we're going to move to step 5. Step 5 is “Ealuation of Effects”. The question here is: "Did it work?"

So maybe we do our new product check list for a few months and then we go back to the data, and we look at it again and we say "Did it go down?"

If it didn't, if the calls got went up again, BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD. But if we got the result that we wanted, if our solution worked we are still not done!

Then we move to step 6. Step 6 is “Standardization”. The idea of standardization is we've gone through a lot of work to get the solution. Let's see how widely we can use it the organization.

So can we use it with other products? New ones the release from now on? or all ones? Can we use it in term of the other departments? … Can we leverage a partner somehow? Anything we can do to widely adapt the learning we worked so hard to get.

After Standardization, we are still not done!

Here is one more step and that is step 7: “Evaluation of the Process”.

Again the idea here is to learn something based on the work that we've done.

When we started out, there probably were one or two people that knew this was a problem. But over time putting a solution in the place, certainly took a group, we then get this group together one more time and we asked the question:

We take these learnings, and we take them forward with us, so the next time we have a problem to solve we are that much better at doing it.

So the next time that you have a problem to solve, if it's a complex problem, don't get caught in a loop for every solution is new problem. Instead, take the time to do “Seven Step Problem Solving”.

First “Define the problem”, “Collect the Data”, and “Analyze the Cause”, that way you make sure that you solve the right problem. After you've done your solution, “Evaluate the Effects”, and if it worked, “Standardize” as widely as you can, and “Evaluate the Process” to work for next time.

That will be more likely to come up with a solution that helps the company, helps the problem, and solves it once and for all.