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The Nature of Problems - Part 14

In his History of the Second World War, Sir Winston Church­ill said that if the V-2 rocket had become operational six months sooner, the favorable outcome to the Allies would have been seriously in question. Perhaps this is one case where the Allies can thank fortune that it took a German engineer six months to think of the direct approach of asking specialists how to solve the kind of problem they specalized in!

There is another advantage in starting with the obvious direct approach to a problem: it at least gets you started. Frequently, the most difficult part of solving a problem is deciding where to begin. But once you do begin, it is like deciding to jump into a cold lake: once you are in the air and falling, the problem no longer exists—you are on your way. So if no better place exists to start on a problem, try the direct approach—do the obvious thing first.

Of course, the direct approach to a problem will not always be successful. But if you are down to a basic problem, you can then see other approaches quite readily. For example:

If the direct approach just will not work, what about the in­direct approach?—how about doing just the opposite?

If your problem seems to have almost an unlimited number of sub problems (for instance, in management we often think of our working force as one mass or one unit, when, in reality, it is a large number of distinct individual people), group the sub problems for group treatment (which you do when you treat with one department or section at a time).

Related terms include business supply chain and business theory.