I am currently crunching through Steve Litt’s brilliant series of books on Troubleshooting. I am hugely into general problem solving frameworks and his Universal Troubleshooting Process (UTP) is one of my favourites.

Today, whilst clearing my backlog on Instapaper I came across this Wired.com piece on legendary design firm IDEO. They use a simply process called “Design Thinking” that they claim is at the heart of their stunning successes:

Practically speaking, the approach isn’t complicated. In stages, it goes like this: firstly, immersion, whereby the designers research the problem by plunging themselves into it – talking to the people they’re trying to help, working with them, interviewing experts. Secondly, synthesis – whereby they gather together their findings and look for patterns. Third, ideation – brainstorming solutions to the real problems identified by stage two. Then comes prototyping, making mock-ups of solutions to try out against the problem. After that comes the product. Only at the end, at the prototyping stage, are judgements made; until then, all ideas are given equal weight.

This methodology is radical in that it differs from traditional approaches to business strategy in two key ways. Whereas in many companies the concept for a new product may have already been based on, say, an idea from the marketing department with a designer later brought in to make it look pretty, design thinking places the designer at the heart of the innovation process. Secondly, the methodology gives a firm framework within which a wider team can work. It takes the cliché of the lone creative mind being struck with genius, and replaces it with a process that a whole team can follow. Creativity, therefore, isn’t a thing that magically appears, but a process you work through.

From: Reinventing British manners the Post-It way – Wired.co.uk

I can see similarities to Ken Watanabe’s simplified problem solving methodology as presented in his best-selling children’s “Problem Solving 101“

1. Understand the current situation current (Immersion)
2. Identify root cause (Sythesis)
3. Develop an effective action plan (Ideation)
4. Execute until solved, making modifications as necessary (Prototyping)

From: http://www.problemsolvingtoolbox.com/

You can also see similarities between IDEO’s framework and Dan Roam’s framework for proble  solving through visual thinking as outlined in “The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures“. In the book Roam explores a four stage process for solving any problem with visual thinking:

1. Look (Immerse/ Understand)
2. See (sythesis / Identify patters / root cause)
3. Imagine (Ideation / Plan)
4. Show (Prototype / Execute)

How do these map to the Universal Troubleshooting Process (UTP)?

The UTP shares the core troubleshooting steps with the other three (3, 4,6,7 and 8), but it has some seemingly anachronous and superfluous steps (1,2,5,9 and 10). I say “seemingly” because experience has taught me that the Universal Troubleshooting Process steps are all necessary and in the right order.

It is aimed more at professional, routine troubleshooters and as such addresses the important psychological factors and habits that contribute to long-term effectiveness.

I cannot do this process justice in a few lines, but here is summary:

1. Prepare - This is about having the right attitude and mindset for troubleshooting as well as the required tools, skills and information. For professional troubleshooters (like Technical Support agents) attitude is one of the most important elements in their professional quality and success.
2. Make damage control plan – This is iatrogenic prevention i.e. do not make things worse. If forces you to think of consequences before trying pot luck fixes.
3. Get a complete and accurate symptom description - Here the UTP shares a step with the first principle of the other three (i.e. Look / Immerse/ Understand). In the UTP thi9s is usually achieved by creating a simple block diagram off the problem system so as to understand elements and relationships.
4. Reproduce the symptom - This is part of fully understanding and verifying the current situation. You verify the symptoms and measure them.
5. Do the appropriate corrective maintenance - This step is again targeted at professional troubleshooters. So many problems are caused by bad maintenance and fixed by routine maintenance, that often it is worth running the standard best practice maintenance procedures over the system and seeing of that fixes the issue.
6. Narrow it down to the root cause - This is the core step. Often it is a process in itself as you look from problem patterns, isolate elements of the system and systematically disqualify them as candidates for root cause. Eventually you generate a most likely root cause hypothesis and proceed to step 7.
7. Repair or replace the defective component - Here you generate a plan to test the hypothesis by fixing, replacing or implementing a work-around for the root cause.
8. Test - You now apply your fix and test to ensure the problem is indeed solved. 
9. Take pride in your solution – This is another psychologically important steps to help prevent burn-out and boost morale.
10. Prevent future occurrence of this problem – This is simple operational best practice. You learn from your problems, document your solutions and new knowledge, you modify systems and procedures to ensure the problem does not reoccur, or you can respond quickly and effectively.

This universal troubleshooting procedure has been a vital tool for my team and I in beating some extremely tough problems, sometimes involving desperate customers begging us to fix badly broken massively complex undocumented systems and us successfully finding and fixing the root cause problems in 24 hours where the system designers could not succeed for months.

I also heartily recommend the Dan Roam and Ken Watanabe books referred to above. They are both brilliant and accessible.

Bob Sutton notes a rave review of EDEO CEO Tim Brown’s new book “Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation“. Bob writes:

The review, called “Redefining a Profession,” concludes that Tim has successfully avoided one of the biggest risks in a book like this one – coming across as too much of a commercial for the firm he leads.  Tim accomplishes this by simply being himself, and indeed, when I read the galleys, that was my comment…”This is 100% Tim Brow.,”  In any conversation you have with Tim, he will do things that many CEOs do not, he will give others lots of credit, he will tell wonderful stories, talk honestly about what works and what doesn’t, and about the limits of the methods used by his company, not just the strengths.  Indeed, for me, as much as I am a big believer in the power of design thinking, after hanging around the Stanford d school for five years or so, although I believe we teach our students well, I am often disturbed because “design thinking” is treated as the answer to every problem and also as more like a religion than a set of practices for sparking creativity.  Tim and his many colleagues at IDEO have had the courage to apply design thinking to almost any problem – from designing better websites, to changing how programmers work together, designing a couple thousand products, revamping operations, and changing customers experiences.   In doing so they have simultaneously pushed the limits of design thinking beyond what others thought possible (hence the title “Redefining a  Profession”) while always acknowledging the limits of the approach.

via Rave Review for Change By Design in New York Times.

The New York Times article is “Redefining a Profession“

Here are a few books that compliment each other wonderfully:

“Getting Things Done” and “Getting It Done”

“McMafia” and “Illicit”

“Nudge” and “Influencer” and “Yes”

Steve Roesler of All Things Workplace, one of the most dependable book recommenders I know of, gives “Rules of Thumb” a rave review in a recent post on his blog.

The subtitle lives up to its words: “52 Truths For Winning At Business Without Losing Your Self”.

You
don’t see many book reviews here even though we receive many
promotional copies. I do look hard at each one but, given my own
business and personal priorities, I only write a review when it’s a
raving recommendation, like: Rules of Thumb: 52 Truths for Winning at Business Without Losing Your Self

Get it over at: Amazon.com

Originally posted to LimbicNutrition.

This little book is getting rave reviews, most notably from “Back of the Napkin” author Dan Roam who writes:

“A truly wonderful book has just hit the stands: Ken Watanabe’s Problem Solving 101. If you like The Back of the Napkin’s approach to looking at the world, you owe it to yourself to get this book.”

Problem Solving 101 – Official site

“Problem Solving 101″ by Ken Watanabe – Amazon.com

The Plenitude: Creativity, Innovation, and Making Stuff by Rich Gold

This came to my attention via Twitter (but I have forgotten from whom!). Got a rave review last year in SAP Design Guild weblog and ComputerWorld.

Follow for Now: Interviews with Friends and Heroes by Roy Christopher (Editor)

Also via Twitter, again forgotten who gave me the heads-up, but I think it was @RoyChristopher. This book seems to have a cult following and even has its own Facebook group.

I am one of Guy Kawasaki’s loyal fans that Bob Sutton mentions in the first paragraph of his review of Kawasaki’s brilliant new book, “Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition“.

If you love Guy’s smarts and irreverent charm, you’ve got to read this book. If you have never read his blog or books — or seen him speak — this is the place to start if you want to understand why Guy has such a huge and loyal army of fans. Guy has had a lot of different careers, including at Apple as an evangelist, a venture capitalist, the master of ceremonies at wildly popular entrepreneurship Boot Camps during the boom, and now on his blog “How to Change the World.” And now you can get the best of his experience and gentle wackiness all in one place.

Last week, I was lucky enough to get an advanced copy of his new book, Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition. I started glancing through it, and instantly, I was hooked and — even though I was supposed to be doing other things — I read it from start to finish. This isn’t a clean linear business book, although the chapters are organized around themes like starting, raising money, innovating, communicating, hiring and firing, working and so on. It is a collection of the best stuff from Guy’s blog and other places, with editing and tweaking. And even if you are rabid reader of the blog, you will want to own a copy of this book.

You can read the rest of the review at Bob’s site: Bob Sutton: Reality Check: Guy Kawasaki’s Magical New Book

Looks like we have a Tipping Point / Made to Stick / Fooled by Randomness type instant classic here:

This year has seen a glut of books on topics in that strange area occupied awkwardly by behavioural economics, cognitive psychology, and experimental philosophy. Some fail to distinguish themselves, merely rehashing the many ways in which we aren’t perfectly rational creatures. Others, however, find an original angle to tack the last 30 years of work since Daniel Kahneman first thought “but wait, real people don’t make rational choices”. Nudge (Thaler and Sunnstein, Yale University Press, 2008) is from two leading University of Chicago economists and takes a public policy angle that has been rewarded in the bestseller lists.

The authors (who refer to each other by their last names, even in the blog that accompanies the book, an awkward affectation that makes me picture two 1950s men in suits at a work cocktail party) have coined a new term: libertarian paternalism. By this they mean that policy makers can use your brain’s decision-making shortcuts to steer you towards good behaviour while still leaving you free to choose bad. It’s opt-out public policy.

Libertarian Paternalism is a brilliant phrase because it has something for everything: libertarianism for the Small Government suit, paternalism for the Smug Liberal. Nudge has been required reading in the halls of English and US power, because it promises that you can have your cake and eat it. You can make decisions for other people, but not be hated by the people who don’t like you making decisions for other people! What’s not to love?

The book has a simple structure: first the authors walk us through our cognitive biases, the flaws in our decision-making apparatus; then they take us through different real-world scenarios such as social security, healthcare, and education; and finally they deal with objections and suggest future avenues of exploration. In each subject area, the authors suggest “nudges” (the authors endow the word with the same near-religious air that accompanies “social graph” and “RoR” in Web 2.0 circles) that will gently encourage people to do the right thing. For example, we tend to fear losing things more than we anticipate gaining things, so the authors suggest we not immediately deduct money from salaries to increase retirement savings (which would be perceived as a loss) but instead reduce future raises and put the reduction towards retirement. Then backing out would require losing the retirement saving you were doing (a loss, felt more keenly than the gain of the spending money).

[From Book Review: Nudge - O'Reilly Radar]

Joe Roper’s Conversational Linux for Newbies (PDF)

A free download from the guys that brought you the superb PBX/VoIP solution PBX in a Flash.

I spotetd this on Ari Rusila’s blog and it reminded me of the One Page Project Manager:

In my post before I mentioned Logical Framework Approach (LogFrame) as a model to improve the use of donation money for regional development. LogFrame is not perfect but even with its weaknesses it is in my opinion the basic mean for programme/project management. There is also other good alternatives as well some upgraded models of LogFrame, but below and from document library you may find the basic matrix of LogFrame idea:

Logical Framework .doc

[From LogFrame: Basic matrix « AriRusila’s BalkanBlog]