When I was a teenager, I was lucky enough to learn how to fly gliders. One evening, a friend of my parents—retired Air Force General Philippe Archambeaud—asked me how many hours I had flown. “Thirty,” I said. “Well,” he replied,…
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As audiences, we shouldn’t be careful about people who qualify their assurance. On the contrary, we should be careful about people who speak with certainty.
Not all types of evidence are equally trustworthy. The higher the level, the more confidence you can have.
As some may know, I have a book on strategic thinking in complex problem solving. It uses a story to introduce the problem-solving process and tools: one day, my dog William goes missing, and there’s a pretty good chance that…
Decision making is a critical part of solving complex problems. In theory, it happens after framing the problem and exploring options and criteria, in the form of a climax where the fundamental components of the process—the question you’re answering, the…
Over the past five months, two Boeing 737 Max airliners have crashed, killing 346 people. Although the story is still unfolding and the investigation is underway, preliminary evidence suggests that design flaws are the cause of the crashes. Here’s a recap…
“All models are wrong but some are useful.” – George Box As an engineer, I was trained to model the world: take a complex system—say, an oil-well drillstring extending several kilometers underground—make assumptions on what matters (e.g., contact with the…
‘Nothing avails but perfection’ may be spelt shorter: ‘Paralysis.’ — Winston Churchill Up until recently, my job entailed updating the faculty policy of a research-intensive university. How do you change the rules that regulate the life of some 500 tenured…
Many of us first interact with problems in a primary-school mathematics class. If your experience is anything like mine, it might have gone like this: “Édouard has a swimming pool. One pump can fill the pool in two hours; the…
There’s widespread agreements across disciplines that effective problem solvers have both deep and broad knowledge (see references below). Depth of knowledge usually isn’t the problem, because it is the central component of many formal training programs. However, most of us don’t…
Isomorphic problems are those that have the same underlying structure. Recognizing that that new problem you’re facing is similar to one that has been solved before, or a simpler one, can go a long way in improving your creativity. Meet…
Recently, I had a conversation with a dean of engineering. He was looking for a big idea—one to take his school from here (top 20 in the US) to there—the ultra-nerd stratosphere. I offered that he promoted training his students…
A central aspect of my approach to solving complex problems builds on the widespread agreement that effective problem solvers are T-shaped, with both depth and breadth of knowledge. Develop a breadth of skills & knowledge The breadth of knowledge—what I call strategic thinking—includes having…
I like biking, and I often take to the roads to commute or to train for one event or another. When I lived in Texas, that made me part of...
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My upcoming book, Strategic Thinking in Complex Problem Solving, is available for pre-order. It will ship on August 3, 2016. The book includes many of the ideas covered on this site with a deeper treatment and references. Here is a brief intro:…
Many of the advanced doctoral students I speak with share one characteristics: they fail to recognize that they have transferrable skills and knowledge. And, as they finally land an interview with a potential employer, they’re selling themselves short. But getting an advanced…
Just a quick note to let you know that the book I’ve been working on, Strategic Thinking in Problem Solving, is now officially under contract with Oxford University Press. More soon.
“The more cheese, the more holes; but the more holes, the less cheese. Therefore the more cheese, the less cheese.” So goes the paradoxe du fromage à trous. Nothing that couldn’t be fixed with a little more accuracy on what we mean….
“Problem solving in medicine is not the same as in military” or so the thinking goes. Of course, there are obvious differences and these differences call for specialized training. But there are also common denominators, and it’s to your benefit to…
“When the facts change, I change my opinion. What do you do, sir?” — John Maynard Keynes In many situations, we don’t follow Keynes’ approach. In fact, in light of new evidence, we usually don’t update our initial beliefs as…
Using analogies can help you approach new, unfamiliar problems creatively, but they can also be constraining. To sidestep this limitation, understand your assumptions and look for alternative analogies. Analogies can help you approach unfamiliar problems Facing an unfamiliar problem, using…
On January 8 1989, British Midland Airways Boeing 737 was cruising at 28,000 ft when a strong vibration shook the plane. Fumes and a burned smell led the crew to believe that one of the engines was malfunctioning. When they throttled back…
Before actively looking for solutions, you should ensure that you understand the problem and its root causes. That is, diagnose before prescribing. Our four-step process makes this explicit—and it makes implicit sense to do so, too—and yet, as my colleagues Enders, König and…
Yale’s Edward Tufte, a preeminent specialist in data visualization, vehemently criticized PowerPoint presentations, noting that it “promotes a cognitive style that disrupts and trivializes evidence” (Tufte, 2003). From experience, thinking about the dozens of presentations I sat in over the past…
The task is simple enough: I’ll give you three numbers, and you guess which rule I had in mind that applies to the set. Ready? 2 – 4 – 6 This is the initial step of Wason’s famous 1960 experiment. The…
Having identified a set of hypotheses—either diagnostic ones, the potential root causes of your problem, or solution ones, the potential options—you need to test them. To do so, you need to conduct tests that can help you rule out some…
Most of us have heard of inductive and deductive logic. Fewer have heard of abductive, and yet, all three are needed to solve complex problems effectively. Deductive logic helps you identify a hypothesis’s surrounding Deductive logic starts from a hypothesis and…
Did Chris Froome dope to win the 2013 TdF? My opinion is that he did. Here is why. In our previous two posts (1 and 2), we talked about Froome’s dominant victory in the 2013 Tour de France to see if we…
Last week, we talked about how we can evaluate whether Chris Froome doped to win the 2013 Tour de France. Let’s retake the issue where we left it. Building the diagnostic map With our problem-solving approach, we use a diagnostic map…
If you went on any cycling-related forum around August 2013, you’d a raging controversy: Did Chris Froome dope to win the 2013 Tour de France? The arguments on both sides echo those that we’ve heard for all doping cases. Also…