Are You Solving the Right Problems?
how good is your company at problem solving? Probably quite good, if your managers are like those at the companies I’ve studied.. What they struggle with, it turns out, is not solving problems but figuring out what the problems are. In surveys of 106 C-suite executives who represented 91 private and public-sector companies in 17 countries, I found that a full 85% strongly agreed or agreed that their organizations were bad at problem diagnosis, and 87% strongly agreed or agreed that this flaw carried significant costs. Fewer than one in 10 said they were unaffected by the issue. The pattern is c
你的公司在解決問題方面有多擅長?如果你們的經理和我所研究過的公司的經理們一樣的話，那可能相當不錯。事實證明，他們所掙扎的不是解決問題，而是弄清問題是什么。在對代表17個國家91家私營和公共部門公司的106名高管進行的調查中，我發現，85%的人強烈同意或同意他們的組織在問題診斷方面做得很差，87%的人強烈同意或同意這一缺陷帶來了巨大的成本。不到十分之一的人表示，他們沒有受到這個問題的影響。模式是c
It has been 40 years since Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Jacob Getzels empirically demonstrated the central role of problem framing in creativity. Thinkers from Albert Einstein to Peter Drucker have emphasized the importance of properly diagnosing your problems. So why do organizations still struggle to get it right?
自Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi和Jacob Getzels經驗證明問題框架在創造力中的核心作用已有40年。 從愛因斯坦到彼得德魯克的思想家都強調了正確診斷問題的重要性。 那么為什么組織仍然難以做到正確呢？
Part of the reason is that we tend to overengineer the diagnostic process. Many existing frameworks—TRIZ, Six Sigma, Scrum, and others—are quite comprehensive. When properly applied, they can be tremendously powerful. But their very thoroughness also makes them too complex and time-consuming to fit into a regular workday. The setting in which people most need to be better at problem diagnosis is not the annual strategy seminar but the daily meeting—so we need tools that don’t require the entire organization to undergo weeks-long training programs.
部分原因是我們傾向于過度設計診斷過程。許多現有框架TRIZ、六西格瑪、Scrum和其他框架都非常全面。如果應用得當，它們可以非常強大。但它們的徹底性也讓它們過于復雜和耗時，無法適應一個正常的工作日。人們最需要更好地進行問題診斷的場合不是年度策略研討會，而是日常會議，因此我們需要的工具不需要整個組織進行為期數周的培訓計劃。
But even when people apply simpler problem-diagnosis frameworks, such as root cause analysis and the related 5 Whys questioning technique, they often find themselves digging deeper into the problem they’ve already defined rather than arriving at another diagnosis. That can be helpful, certainly. But creative solutions nearly always come from an alternative definition of your problem.
但是，即使人們使用更簡單的問題診斷框架，如根本原因分析和相關的“為什么”提問技巧，他們也常常發現自己在已經定義的問題中挖掘得更深，而不是得出另一個診斷。這當然是有幫助的。但創造性的解決方案幾乎總是來自對問題的另一種定義。
Through my research on corporate innovation, much of it conducted with my colleague Paddy Miller, I have spent close to 10 years working with and studying reframing—first in the narrow context of organizational change and then more broadly. In the following pages I offer a new approach to problem diagnosis that can be applied quickly and, I’ve found, frequently leads to creative solutions by unearthing radically different framings of familiar and persistent problems. To put reframing in context, I’ll explain more precisely just what this approach is trying to achieve.
通過我對企業創新的研究，其中大部分是與我的同事帕蒂?米勒(Paddy Miller)一起進行的，我花了近10年的時間，首先在組織變革的狹窄背景下研究重構，然后在更廣泛的背景下研究重構。在接下來的幾頁中，我提供了一種新的問題診斷方法，這種方法可以快速應用，而且我發現，通過挖掘出熟悉的和持久的問題的完全不同的框架，經常會帶來創造性的解決方案。為了將重新構建放到上下文中，我將更精確地解釋這種方法的目的。
The Slow Elevator Problem
電梯速度慢的問題
Imagine this: You are the owner of an office building, and your tenants are complaining about the elevator. It’s old and slow, and they have to wait a lot. Several tenants are threatening to break their leases if you don’t fix the problem.
想象一下:你是一棟辦公樓的業主，而你的房客卻在抱怨電梯。這房子又舊又慢，而且他們要等很長時間。如果你不解決這個問題，有幾個房客威脅要解除租約。
When asked, most people quickly identify some solutions: replace the lift, install a stronger motor, or perhaps upgrade the algorithm that runs the lift. These suggestions fall into what I call a solution space: a cluster of solutions that share assumptions about what the problem is—in this case, that the elevator is slow. This framing is illustrated below.
當被問到這個問題時，大多數人都會很快找到一些解決方案:更換電梯，安裝一個更強的電機，或者升級運行電梯的算法。這些建議屬于我所說的“解決方案空間”:一組解決方案，它們共享關于本例中問題所在的假設，即電梯很慢。這個框架如下圖所示。
However, when the problem is presented to building managers, they suggest a much more elegant solution: Put up mirrors next to the elevator. This simple measure has proved wonderfully effective in reducing complaints, because people tend to lose track of time when given something utterly fascinating to look at—namely, themselves.
然而，當這個問題被提交給建筑管理人員時，他們提出了一個更優雅的解決方案:在電梯旁安裝鏡子。事實證明，這個簡單的方法在減少抱怨方面非常有效，因為當人們看到一些非常吸引人的東西時，他們往往會忘記時間，那就是他們自己。
The mirror solution is particularly interesting because in fact it is not a solution to the stated problem: It doesn’t make the elevator faster. Instead it proposes a different understanding of the problem.
鏡像解決方案特別有趣，因為實際上它并不是上述問題的解決方案:它不會使電梯更快。相反，它提出了對這個問題的不同理解。
Note that the initial framing of the problem is not necessarily wrong. Installing a new lift would probably work. The point of reframing is not to find the “real” problem but, rather, to see if there is a better one to solve. In fact, the very idea that a single root problem exists may be misleading; problems are typically multicausal and can be addressed in many ways. The elevator issue, for example, could be reframed as a peak demand problem—too many people need the lift at the same time—leading to a solution that focuses on spreading out the demand, such as by staggering people’s lunch breaks.
注意，問題的初始框架不一定是錯誤的。安裝一個新的電梯可能會奏效。重構的目的不是找出真正的問題，而是看看是否有更好的問題需要解決。事實上，認為存在單一根源問題的想法本身可能具有誤導性;問題通常是多句性的，可以通過多種方式解決。例如，電梯問題可以被重新定義為一個高峰需求問題，因為太多的人同時需要電梯，導致了一個解決方案，重點是分散需求，如通過錯開人們的午餐brea
Identifying a different aspect of the problem can sometimes deliver radical improvements—and even spark solutions to problems that have seemed intractable for decades. I recently saw this in action when studying an often overlooked problem in the pet industry: the number of dogs in shelters.
確定問題的不同方面有時可以帶來根本性的改善，甚至可以激發解決問題的靈感，而這些問題幾十年來似乎一直難以解決。最近，我在研究寵物行業一個經常被忽視的問題時發現了這一點:收容所中狗的數量。
America s Dog-Adoption Problem
美國的狗收養問題
Dogs are very popular in America: Industry statistics suggest that more than 40% of U.S. households have one. But this fondness for dogs has a downside: According to estimates by the ASPCA, one of the largest animal-welfare groups in the United States, more than 3 million dogs enter a shelter each year and are put up for adoption.
狗在美國很受歡迎:行業統計數據顯示，超過40%的美國家庭養狗。但這種對狗的喜愛也有不利的一面:根據美國最大的動物福利組織之一美國防止虐待動物協會(ASPCA)的估計，每年有300多萬只狗進入收容所并被領養。
Shelters and other animal-welfare organizations work hard to raise awareness of this issue. A typical ad or poster will show a neglected, sad-looking dog, carefully chosen to evoke compassion, along with a line such as Save a life adopt a dog or perhaps a request to donate to the cause. Through this and other initiatives, this notoriously underfunded system manages to get about 1.4 million dogs adopted each year. But that leaves more than a million unadopted dogs and doesn t account for the many cats and other pets in the same situation. There is just a limited amount of compassion to go aro
動物收容所和其他動物福利組織努力提高人們對這一問題的認識。一個典型的廣告或海報會展示一只被忽視的、看起來很悲傷的狗，精心挑選來喚起人們的同情，同時還會有諸如“拯救生命”、“收養一只狗”或“向慈善事業捐款”之類的語句。通過這一舉措和其他舉措，這個資金嚴重不足的系統每年成功收養了大約140萬只狗。但是，還有100多萬只狗沒有被收養，這還沒有算上處于同樣境況的貓和其他寵物的數量。對阿羅的同情是有限的
Lori Weise, the founder of Downtown Dog Rescue in Los Angeles, has demonstrated that adoption is not the only way to frame the problem. Weise is one of the pioneers of an approach that is currently spreading within the industry—the shelter intervention program. Rather than seek to get more dogs adopted, Weise tries to keep them with their original families so that they never enter shelters in the first place. It turns out that about 30% of the dogs that enter a shelter are “owner surrenders,” deliberately relinquished by their owners. In a volunteer-driven community united by a deep love of animals, those people have often been heavily criticized for heartlessly discarding their pets as if they were just another consumer good. To prevent dogs from ending up with such “bad” owners, many shelters, despite their chronic overpopulation, require potential adopters to undergo laborious background checks.
Lori Weise是洛杉磯Downtown Dog Rescue的創始人，他已經證明采用并不是解決問題的唯一方法。 Weise是目前在行業內傳播的方法的先驅之一 - 住房干預計劃。 Weise不是試圖讓更多的狗被收養，而是試圖讓他們與原來的家庭保持聯系，這樣他們就不會首先進入避難所。 事實證明，大約30％進入庇護所的狗是“所有者投降”，故意由其主人放棄。 在一個充滿熱愛動物的志愿者驅動的社區中，這些人經常因為無情地丟棄他們的寵物而受到嚴厲的批評，好像他們只是另一種消費品。 為了防止狗與這些“壞”的主人結束，許多避難所盡管長期人口過剩，但仍需要潛在的采用者進行艱苦的背景調查。
Weise has a different take. “Owner surrenders are not a people problem,” she says. “By and large, they are a poverty problem. These families love their dogs as much as we do, but they are also exceptionally poor. We’re talking about people who in some cases aren’t entirely sure how they will feed their kids at the end of the month. So when a new landlord suddenly demands a deposit to house the dog, they simply have no way to get the money. In other cases, the dog needs a $10 rabies shot, but the family has no access to a vet, or may be afraid to approach any kind of authority. Handing over their pet to a shelter is often the last option they believe they have.”
韋斯有不同的看法。 “所有者投降不是人的問題，”她說。 “總的來說，他們是一個貧困問題。 這些家庭和我們一樣愛他們的狗，但他們也非常貧窮。 我們談論的是那些在某些情況下并不完全確定他們將在月底如何養活孩子的人。 因此，當一個新的房東突然要求存款來養狗時，他們根本無法獲得這筆錢。 在其他情況下，狗需要10美元狂犬病射擊，但家庭無法接觸獸醫，或者可能害怕接近任何類型的權威。 將寵物交給庇護所通常是他們認為的最后選擇。“
Weise started her program in April 2013, collaborating with a shelter in South Los Angeles. The idea is simple: Whenever a family comes in to hand over a pet, a staff member asks without judgment if the family would prefer to keep the pet. If the answer is yes, the staff member tries to help resolve the problem, drawing on his or her network and knowledge of the system.
2013年4月，威斯與洛杉磯南部的一家收容所合作，開始了她的項目。這個想法很簡單:每當一個家庭來移交寵物時，工作人員會不加判斷地詢問這個家庭是否愿意養寵物。如果答案是肯定的，工作人員就會利用他或她的網絡和對系統的知識來幫助解決問題。
Within the first year it was clear that the program was a remarkable success. In prior years Weise’s organization had spent an average of $85 per pet it helped. The new program brought that cost down to about $60 while keeping shelter space free for other animals in need. And, Weise told me, that was just the immediate impact: “The wider effect on the community is the real point. The program helps families learn problem solving, lets them know their rights and responsibilities, and teaches the community that help is available. It also shifted the industry’s perception of the pet owners: We found that when offered assistance, a full 75% of them actually wanted to keep their pets.”
在第一年內，該計劃顯然取得了巨大成功。 在前幾年，Weise的組織平均每只寵物花費85美元。 新計劃將成本降至約60美元，同時為其他有需要的動物保留了避難空間。 而且，韋斯告訴我，這只是直接影響：“對社區的更廣泛影響才是真正的重點。 該計劃幫助家庭學習解決問題，讓他們了解自己的權利和責任，并教導社區提供幫助。 它也改變了業界對寵物主人的看法：我們發現，當提供援助時，其中75％的人實際上想要養寵物。“
You won t know which problems can benefit from being reframed until you try.
除非你嘗試，否則你不會知道哪些問題可以從重構中受益。
As of this writing, Weise s program has helped close to 5,000 pets and families and has gained the formal support of the ASPCA. Weise has released a book, First Home, Forever Home, that explains to other rescue groups how to run an intervention program. Thanks to her reframing of the problem, overcrowded shelters may someday be a thing of the past.
在撰寫本文時，Weise的項目已經幫助了近5000只寵物和家庭，并獲得了美國防止虐待動物協會的正式支持。威斯出版了一本名為《第一家園，永遠的家園》的書，向其他救援組織解釋了如何實施干預計劃。多虧了她對這個問題的重新認識，過度擁擠的庇護所也許有一天會成為歷史。
How might you find a similarly insightful reframing for your problem
您如何為您的問題找到類似的有洞察力的重構
Seven Practices for Effective Reframing
七個有效的重構實踐
In my experience, reframing is best taught as a quick, iterative process. You might think of it as a cognitive counterpoint to rapid prototyping.
根據我的經驗，重構最好是作為一個快速的迭代過程來教授。你可以把它看作是快速原型的認知對應物。
The practices I outline here can be used in one of two ways, depending on how much control you have over the situation. One way is to methodically apply all seven to the problem. That can be done in about 30 minutes, and it has the benefit of familiarizing everyone with the method.
我在這里概述的實踐可以以兩種方式之一使用，這取決于您對情況的控制程度。一種方法是有條不紊地將這七種方法應用到問題中。這可以在30分鐘內完成，而且它的好處是讓每個人都熟悉了這種方法。
The other way is suitable when you don t control the situation and have to scale the method according to how much time is available. Perhaps a team member ambushes you in the hallway and you have only five minutes to help him or her rethink a problem. If so, simply select the one or two practices that seem most appropriate.
另一種方法適用于不控制情況，并且必須根據可用的時間來擴展方法。也許一個團隊成員在走廊里伏擊了你，而你只有五分鐘的時間來幫助他或她重新思考問題。如果是這樣，只需選擇一兩個看起來最合適的實踐。
Five minutes may sound like too little time to even describe a problem, much less reframe it. But surprisingly, I have found that such short interventions are often sufficient to kick-start new thinking—and once in a while they can trigger an aha moment and radically shift your view of a problem. Proximity to your own problems can make it easy to get lost in the weeds, endlessly ruminating about why a colleague, a spouse, or your children won’t listen. Sometimes all you need is someone to suggest, “Well, could the trouble be that?you?are bad at listening to?them?”
五分鐘可能聽起來甚至沒有時間來描述問題，更不用說重新構造它了。 但令人驚訝的是，我發現這種短暫的干預通常足以啟動新的思維 - 偶爾它們可以引發一個時刻，并從根本上改變你對問題的看法。 靠近自己的問題可以很容易迷失在雜草中，無休止地反復思考為什么同事，配偶或你的孩子不會聽。 有時你需要的只是有人建議，“嗯，難道你不好聽你的話嗎？”
Of course, not all problems are that simple. Often multiple rounds of reframing interspersed with observation, conversation, and prototyping are necessary. And in some cases reframing won t help at all. But you won t know which problems can benefit from being reframed until you try. Once you ve mastered the five-minute version, you can apply reframing to pretty much any problem you face.
當然，并不是所有的問題都那么簡單。通常需要多輪的重新構建，其間穿插觀察、對話和原型。在某些情況下，重新構建根本沒有幫助。但是，除非你嘗試，否則你不會知道哪些問題可以從重構中受益。一旦你掌握了5分鐘的版本，你就可以把重構應用到你面臨的任何問題上。
Here are the seven practices
以下是七個實踐
1. Establish legitimacy.?
It s difficult to use reframing if you are the only person in the room who understands the method. Other people, driven by a desire to find solutions, may feel that your insistence on discussing the problem is counterproductive. If the group has a power imbalance, such as when you re facing clients or more-senior colleagues, they may well shut you down before you even get started. And even powerful executives may find it hard to use the method when people are accustomed to getting answers rather than questions from their leaders.
1. 建立的合法性。
如果你是這個房間里唯一一個理解這種方法的人，你就很難使用重構。另一些人，在尋求解決方案的欲望驅使下，可能會覺得你堅持討論問題會適得其反。如果團隊存在權力不平衡，比如當你面對客戶或更資深的同事時，他們很可能在你開始之前就把你關了。而且，當人們習慣于從他們的領導者那里得到答案而不是問題時，即使是有權有勢的高管也可能發現很難使用這種方法。
Your first job, therefore, is to establish the method’s legitimacy within the group, creating the conversational space necessary to employ reframing. I suggest two ways to do this. The first is to share this article with the people you are meeting. Even if they don’t read it, simply seeing it may persuade them to listen to you. The second is to relate the slow elevator problem, which is my go-to example when I have less than 30 seconds to explain the concept. I have found it to be a powerful way to quickly explain reframing—how it differs from merely diagnosing a problem and how it can potentially create dramatically better results.
因此，您的第一項工作是在團隊中建立方法的合法性，創建使用重構所必需的對話空間。 我建議兩種方法來做到這一點。 首先是與您正在開會的人分享這篇文章。 即使他們不讀它，只是看到它可能會說服他們聽你的。 第二個是關聯緩慢的電梯問題，這是我的第一個例子，當我有不到30秒的時間來解釋這個概念。 我發現它是一種快速解釋重構的有效方法 - 它與僅僅診斷一個問題有什么不同，以及它如何能夠產生顯著更好的結果。
2. Bring outsiders into the discussion.?
This is the single most helpful reframing practice. I saw it in action eight years ago when the management team of a small European company was wrestling with a lack of innovation in its workforce. The managers had recently encountered a specific innovation training technique they all liked, so they started discussing how best to implement it within the organization.
2. 讓外人參與討論。
這是一個最有幫助的重構實踐。八年前，當一家歐洲小公司的管理團隊正努力解決員工缺乏創新的問題時，我親眼目睹了這一點。經理們最近遇到了一種他們都喜歡的創新培訓技術，所以他們開始討論如何在組織內最好地實施它。
Sensing that the group lacked an outside voice, the general manager asked his personal assistant, Charlotte, to take part in their discussion. I ve been working here for 12 years, Charlotte told the group, and in that time I have seen three different management teams try to roll out some new innovation framework. None of them worked. I don t think people would react well to the introduction of another set of buzzwords.
總經理意識到這群人缺乏一種外界的聲音，于是請他的私人助理夏洛特(Charlotte)參加他們的討論。“我在這里工作了12年，”夏洛特告訴該組織，“在這期間，我看到了3個不同的管理團隊試圖推出一些新的創新框架。他們都沒有成功。我不認為人們會對引入另一套流行語做出很好的反應。
Charlotte s observation prompted the managers to realize that they had fallen in love with a solution introducing an innovation framework before they fully understood the problem. They soon concluded that their initial diagnosis had been wrong: Many of their employees already knew how to innovate, but they didn t feel very engaged in the company, so they were unlikely to take initiative beyond what their job descriptions mandated. What the managers had first framed as a skill-set problem was better approached as a motivation problem.
夏洛特的觀察促使經理們意識到，在他們完全理解問題之前，他們已經愛上了引入創新框架的解決方案。他們很快得出結論，他們最初的診斷是錯誤的:他們的許多員工已經知道如何創新，但他們覺得自己對公司不太投入，所以他們不太可能在工作職責之外采取主動。經理們最初將其框定為技能集問題的東西，最好作為激勵問題來處理。
They abandoned all talk of innovation workshops and instead focused on improving employee engagement by (among other things) giving people more autonomy, introducing flexible working hours, and switching to a more participatory decision-making style. The remedy worked. Within 18 months workplace satisfaction scores had doubled and employee turnover had fallen dramatically. And as people started bringing their creative abilities to bear at work, financial results improved markedly. Four years later the company won an award for being the country s best place to work.
他們放棄了所有關于創新研討會的討論，轉而專注于提高員工的參與度，方法包括(在其他方面)給予員工更多自主權、引入靈活的工作時間，以及轉向更具參與性的決策風格。補救工作。在18個月內，工作滿意度翻了一番，員工流動率大幅下降。隨著人們開始在工作中發揮他們的創造性能力，財務業績顯著改善。四年后，該公司獲得了全國最佳工作場所獎。
As this story shows, getting an outsider s perspective can be instrumental in rethinking a problem quickly and properly. To do so most effectively：
正如這個故事所顯示的，從局外人的角度來看待問題，可以幫助你快速而正確地重新思考問題。最有效地做到這一點：
Look for boundary spanners. As research by Michael Tushman and many others has shown, the most useful input tends to come from people who understand but are not fully part of your world. Charlotte was close enough to the front lines of the company to know how the employees really felt, but she was also close enough to management to understand its priorities and speak its language, making her ideally suited for the task. In contrast, calling on an innovation expert might well have led the team s members further down the innovation path instead of inspiring them to rethink their problem.
尋找邊界扳手。邁克爾?圖什曼(Michael Tushman)等人的研究表明，最有用的信息往往來自那些理解你的人，但他們并不完全屬于你的世界。夏洛特與公司的第一線關系密切，能夠了解員工的真實感受，但她也與管理層關系密切，能夠理解公司的優先事項，并能說公司的語言，這使她非常適合這項任務。相比之下，聘請創新專家很可能會讓團隊成員在創新道路上走得更遠，而不是鼓勵他們重新思考自己的問題。
Choose someone who will speak freely. By virtue of her long tenure and her closeness to the general manager, Charlotte felt free to challenge the management team while remaining committed to its objectives. This sense of psychological safety, as Harvard s Amy C. Edmondson calls it, has been proved to help groups perform better. You might consider turning to someone whose career advancement will not be determined by the group in question or who has a track record of (constructively) speaking truth to power.
選擇一個暢所欲言的人。由于她的長期任期和她與總經理的親密關系，夏洛特感到可以自由地挑戰管理團隊，同時繼續致力于其目標。哈佛大學的艾米·c·埃德蒙森(Amy C. Edmondson)稱這種心理安全感有助于團隊表現得更好。你可能會考慮求助于這樣的人，他的職業發展不會由他所在的團隊決定，或者他有(建設性地)向權力說出真相的記錄。
Expect input, not solutions. Crucially, Charlotte did not try to provide the group with a solution; rather, her observation made the managers themselves rethink their problem. This pattern is typical. By definition, outsiders are not experts on the situation and thus will rarely be able to solve the problem. That s not their function. They are there to stimulate the problem owners to think differently. So when you bring them in, ask them specifically to challenge the group s thinking, and prime the problem owners to listen and look for input rather than answers.
期待輸入，而不是解決方案。至關重要的是，夏洛蒂并沒有試圖為這群人提供解決方案;相反，她的觀察讓經理們自己重新思考了他們的問題。這種模式很典型。從定義上講，外部人士不是局勢的專家，因此很少能夠解決問題。這不是它們的函數。它們的存在是為了刺激問題所有者以不同的方式思考。所以，當你把他們帶進來的時候，要特別要求他們挑戰團隊的思維，讓問題的擁有者去傾聽，去尋找輸入，而不是答案。
3. Get people s definitions in writing.?
It s not unusual for people to leave a meeting thinking they all agree on what the problem is after a loose oral description, only to discover weeks or months later that they had different views of the issue. Moreover, a successful reframing may well lurk in one of those views.
3.把人們的定義寫下來。
人們在結束會議時認為他們在一個松散的口頭描述之后對問題是什么達成了一致，但幾周或幾個月后才發現他們對這個問題有不同的看法，這并不罕見。此外，一個成功的重構很可能潛伏在這些觀點之一。
For instance, a management team may agree that the company’s problem is a lack of innovation. But if you ask each member to describe what’s wrong in a sentence or two, you will quickly see how framings differ. Some people will claim, “Our employees aren’t motivated to innovate” or “They don’t understand the urgency of the situation.” Others will say, “People don’t have the right skill set,” “Our customers aren’t willing to pay for innovation,” or “We don’t reward people for innovation.” Pay close attention to the wording, because even seemingly inconsequential word choices can surface a new perspective on the problem.
例如，管理團隊可能會同意公司的問題是缺乏創新。 但是如果你要求每個成員描述一兩句話中的錯誤，你會很快看到框架的不同之處。 有些人會說，“我們的員工沒有動力進行創新”或“他們不了解情況的緊迫性。”其他人會說，“人們沒有合適的技能，”“我們的客戶不是' 愿意為創新付錢，“或”我們不會獎勵人們的創新。“密切注意措辭，因為即使看似無關緊要的單詞選擇也可以在問題上找到新的視角。
I saw a memorable demonstration of this when I was working with a group of managers in the construction industry, exploring what they could do as individual leaders to deliver better results. As we tried to identify the barriers each one faced, I asked them to write their problems on flip charts, after which we jointly analyzed the statements. The very first comment from the group had the greatest impact: “Almost none of the definitions include the word ‘I.’” With one exception, the problems were consistently worded in a way that diffused individual responsibility, such as “My team doesn’t…,” “The market doesn’t…,” and, in a few cases, “We don’t…” That one observation shifted the tenor of the meeting, pushing the participants to take more ownership of the challenges they faced.
當我與建筑行業的一組管理人員合作時，我看到了一個令人難忘的演示，探索他們作為個人領導者可以做些什么來提供更好的結果。 當我們試圖找出每個人面臨的障礙時，我讓他們在活動掛圖上寫下他們的問題，之后我們共同分析了這些陳述。 該小組的第一個評論產生了最大的影響：“幾乎沒有一個定義包括'我'這個詞。”除了一個例外，這些問題的措辭始終如一，散布個人責任，例如“我的團隊沒有” t ...，“”市場不......，“在少數情況下，”我們不......“這一觀察改變了會議的主旨，推動參與者更多地了解他們所面臨的挑戰。
These individual definitions of the problem should ideally be gathered in advance of a discussion. If possible, ask people to send you a few lines in a confidential e-mail, and insist that they write in sentence form bullet points are simply too condensed. Then copy the definitions you ve collected on a flip chart so that everyone can see them and react to them in the meeting. Don t attribute them, because you want to ensure that people s judgment of a definition isn t affected by the definer s identity or status.
理想情況下，應該在討論之前收集這些問題的單獨定義。如果可能的話，讓別人在一封保密的電子郵件中給你寫幾行話，并堅持讓他們用句子形式來寫要點，因為要點太過簡潔。然后把你收集到的定義復制到活動掛圖上，這樣每個人都能看到它們，并在會議上做出反應。不要賦予他們屬性，因為你想確保人們對定義的判斷不受定義者的身份或地位的影響。
Receiving these multiple definitions will sensitize you to the perspectives of other stakeholders. We all appreciate in theory that others may experience a problem differently (or not see it at all). But as demonstrated in a recent study by Johannes Hattula, of Imperial College London, if managers try to imagine a customer s perspective themselves, they typically get it wrong. To understand what other stakeholders think, you need to hear it from them.
接收這些多個定義將使您對其他涉眾的觀點更加敏感。從理論上講，我們都明白，其他人可能會有不同的經歷(或者根本看不到)。但是，正如倫敦帝國理工學院的約翰內斯·哈圖拉最近的一項研究所表明的，如果經理們試圖想象顧客對自己的看法，他們通常會弄錯。要了解其他涉眾的想法，您需要聽取他們的意見。
4. Ask what’s??missing.?
When faced with the description of a problem, people tend to delve into the details of what has been stated, paying less attention to what the description might be leaving out. To rectify this, make sure to ask explicitly what has not been captured or mentioned.
4. 詢問缺少了什么。
當面對一個問題的描述時，人們傾向于鉆研所陳述內容的細節，而較少注意描述中可能遺漏的內容。要糾正這一點，一定要明確詢問哪些內容沒有被捕獲或提到。
Recently I worked with a team of senior executives in Brazil who had been asked to provide their CEO with ideas for improving the market’s perception of the company’s stock price. The team had expertly analyzed the components affecting a stock’s value—the P/E ratio forecast, the debt ratio, earnings per share, and so on. Of course, none of this was news to the CEO, nor were these factors particularly easy to affect, leading to mild despondency on the team.
最近，我與巴西的一個高級管理人員團隊合作，他們被要求為他們的CEO提供改善市場對公司股價的看法的想法。 該團隊專業分析了影響股票價值的因素 - 市盈率預測，負債率，每股收益等。 當然，這些都不是首席執行官的新聞，也不是這些因素特別容易影響，導致團隊的輕微失望。
But when I prompted the executives to zoom out and consider what was missing from their definition of the problem, something new came up. It turned out that when external financial analysts asked to speak with executives from the company, the task of responding was typically delegated to slightly more junior leaders, none of whom had received training in how to talk to analysts. As soon as this point was raised, the group saw that it had found a potential recommendation for the CEO. (The observation came not from the team s finance expert but from a boundary-spanning HR executive.)
但當我提醒高管們縮小范圍，考慮一下他們對問題的定義中缺失了什么時，一些新的東西出現了。事實證明，當外部財務分析師要求與該公司高管交談時，通常會把回應的任務委派給資歷稍淺的領導者，而這些人都沒有接受過如何與分析師交談的培訓。這一點一提出來，該集團就發現，它已經為首席執行官找到了一個潛在的建議。(觀察結果并非來自團隊的財務專家，而是一位跨領域的人力資源高管。)
5. Consider multiple categories.
As Lori Weise s story demonstrates, powerful change can come from transforming people s perception of a problem. One way to trigger this kind of paradigm shift is to invite people to identify specifically what category of problem they think the group is facing. Is it an incentive problem? An expectations problem? An attitude problem? Then try to suggest other categories.
5. 考慮多個類別。
正如洛麗·韋斯的故事所證明的，強大的改變可以來自于改變人們對問題的看法。觸發這種范式轉變的一種方法是邀請人們明確地確定他們認為團隊面臨的問題類別。這是一個激勵問題嗎?一個預期的問題嗎?一種態度問題?然后嘗試推薦其他類別。
A manager I know named Jeremiah Zinn did this when he led the product development team of the popular children s entertainment channel Nickelodeon. The team was launching a promising new app, and lots of kids downloaded it. But actually activating the app was somewhat complicated, because it required logging in to the household s cable TV service. At that point in the sign-up process, almost every kid dropped out.
我認識的一位名叫耶利米·津恩(Jeremiah Zinn)的經理就是這么做的，當時他領導著廣受歡迎的兒童娛樂頻道尼克國際兒童頻道(Nickelodeon)的產品開發團隊。這個團隊推出了一個很有前途的新應用，很多孩子都下載了它。但實際上，激活這款應用程序有點復雜，因為它需要登錄用戶的有線電視服務。在那個時候，幾乎所有的孩子都退學了。
Seeing the problem as one of usability, the team put its expertise to work and ran hundreds of A/B tests on various sign-up flows, seeking to make the process less complex. Nothing helped.
將該問題視為可用性之一，該團隊將其專業知識用于工作，并對各種注冊流程進行了數百次A / B測試，旨在使該過程不那么復雜。 什么都沒有幫助。
The shift came when Zinn realized that the team members had been thinking of the problem too narrowly. They had focused on the kids’ actions, carefully tracking every click and swipe—but they had not explored how the kids?felt?during the sign-up process. That turned out to be critical. As the team started looking for emotional reactions, it discovered that the request for the cable password made the kids fear getting in trouble: To a 10-year-old kid, a password request signals forbidden territory. Equipped with that insight, Zinn’s team simply added a short video explaining that it was OK to ask parents for the password—and saw a rapid 10-fold increase in the sign-up rate for the app.
當Zinn意識到團隊成員過于狹隘地考慮問題時，這種轉變就來了。 他們專注于孩子們的行動，仔細跟蹤每次點擊和刷卡 - 但他們沒有探究孩子們在注冊過程中的感受。 結果證明這很關鍵。 隨著團隊開始尋找情緒反應，它發現有線電話密碼的請求讓孩子們害怕遇到麻煩：對于一個10歲的孩子，密碼請求發出禁止的領域信號。 Zinn的團隊配備了這種洞察力，只是簡單地添加了一個簡短的視頻，說明可以向父母詢問密碼，并且該應用程序的注冊率提高了10倍。
By explicitly highlighting how the group thinks about a problem—what is sometimes called metacognition, or thinking about thinking—you can often help people reframe it, even if you don’t have other frames to suggest. And it’s a useful way of sorting through written definitions if you managed to gather them in advance.
通過明確突出小組如何思考問題 - 有時稱為元認知或思考思考 - 即使您沒有其他框架可供建議，您也可以經常幫助人們重新構思。 如果您設法提前收集它們，那么它是一種有用的方式來對書面定義進行排序。
Zinn’s?story also exposes a typical pitfall in problem solving, first expressed by Abraham Kaplan in his famous law of the instrument: Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding. At Nickelodeon, because the team members were usability experts, they defaulted to thinking the problem was one of usability.
津恩的故事也暴露了一個典型的問題解決陷阱，亞伯拉罕·卡普蘭(Abraham Kaplan)在他著名的《工具法則》(law of the instrument)中首次表達了這一觀點:給一個小男孩一把錘子，他會發現他遇到的一切都需要敲打。在Nickelodeon，由于團隊成員都是可用性專家，他們默認認為這個問題是可用性的問題之一。
6. Analyze positive exceptions.?
To find additional problem framings, look to instances when the problem did not occur, asking, What was different about that situation? Exploring such positive exceptions, sometimes called bright spots, can often uncover hidden factors whose influence the group may not have considered.
6. 分析積極的例外。
要找到額外的問題框架，可以查看沒有出現問題的實例，詢問這種情況有什么不同?探索這些積極的例外情況，有時被稱為亮點，往往可以發現一些隱藏的因素，而這些因素的影響可能是團隊沒有考慮到的。
A lawyer I spoke to, for instance, told me that the partners at his firm would occasionally meet to discuss initiatives that might grow their business in the longer term. But to his frustration, the instant one of those meetings ended, he and the other partners went back to focusing on landing the next short-term project. When prompted to think of positive exceptions, he remembered one longer-term initiative that had in fact gone forward.
例如，一位與我交談過的律師告訴我，他所在律所的合伙人偶爾會會面，討論從長遠來看可能促進業務增長的舉措。但令他沮喪的是，其中一次會議一結束，他和其他合伙人就重新專注于下一個短期項目。當被要求考慮積極的例外情況時，他想起了一項實際上已經取得進展的長期計劃。
What was different about that one? I asked. It was that the meeting, unusually, had included not just partners but also an associate who was considered a rising star and it was she who had pursued the idea. That immediately suggested that talented associates be included in future meetings. The associates felt privileged and energized by being invited to the strategic discussions, and unlike the partners, they had a clear short-term incentive to move on long-term projects namely, to impress the partners and gain an edge in the competition against their peers.
那個有什么不同?我問。不同尋常的是，這次會議不僅包括合伙人，還包括一位被認為是后起之秀的合伙人，正是她提出了這個想法。這立即表明，未來的會議應該包括有才華的同事。被邀請參加戰略討論的員工感到特權和活力，與合伙人不同的是，他們有明確的短期動機去進行長期項目，即給合伙人留下深刻印象，并在與同行的競爭中獲得優勢。
A checklist for problem diagnosis tends to discourage actual thinking.
診斷問題的清單往往會阻礙實際的思考。
Looking at positive exceptions can also make the discussion less threatening. Especially in a large group or other public setting, dissecting a string of failures can quickly become confrontational and make people overly defensive. If, instead, you ask the group s members to analyze a positive outcome, it becomes easier for them to examine their own behavior.
看到積極的例外情況也可以使討論不那么具有威脅性。尤其是在大型團體或其他公共場合，剖析一連串的失敗很快就會變得具有對抗性，讓人們變得過于防御性。相反，如果你讓小組成員分析一個積極的結果，他們就更容易檢查自己的行為。
7. Question the objective.?
In the negotiation classic Getting to Yes, Roger Fisher, William L. Ury, and Bruce Patton share the early management thinker Mary Parker Follett s story about two people fighting over whether to keep a window open or closed. The underlying goals of the two turn out to differ: One person wants fresh air, while the other wants to avoid a draft. Only when these hidden objectives are brought to light through the questions of a third person is the problem resolved by opening a window in the next room.
7. 問題的目標。
在談判經典之作《走向成功》(Getting to Yes)中，羅杰?費舍爾(Roger Fisher)、威廉?l?尤里(William L. Ury)和布魯斯?巴頓(Bruce Patton)分享了早期管理思想家瑪麗?帕克?福利特(Mary Parker Follett)的故事。這兩個人的基本目標是不同的:一個人想呼吸新鮮空氣，而另一個人想避免通風。只有當這些隱藏的目標通過第三人的問題被揭示出來時，才能通過打開隔壁房間的窗戶來解決問題。
That story highlights another way to reframe a problem by paying explicit attention to the objectives of the parties involved, first clarifying and then challenging them. Weise s shelter intervention program, for instance, hinged on a shift in the objective, from increasing adoption to keeping more pets with their original owners. The story of Charlotte, too, included a shift in the stated goals of the management team, from teaching innovation skills to boosting employee engagement.
這個故事強調了另一種重新構建問題的方法，即明確關注相關各方的目標，首先澄清目標，然后提出挑戰。例如，威斯的收容所干預計劃，就取決于目標的轉變，從增加領養到與原來的主人一起飼養更多的寵物。夏洛特的故事也包括管理團隊既定目標的轉變，從傳授創新技能到提高員工參與度。
As described in Fred Kaplan’s book?The Insurgents,?a famous contemporary example is the change in U.S. military doctrine pioneered by General David Petraeus, among others. In traditional warfare, the aim of a battle is to defeat the enemy forces. But Petraeus and his allies argued that when dealing with insurgencies, the army had to pursue a different, broader objective to prevent new enemies from cropping up—namely, get the populace on its side, thereby removing the source of recruits and other forms of local support the insurgency needed to operate in the area. That approach was eventually adopted by the military—because a small group of rogue thinkers took it upon themselves to question the predefined and long-standing objectives of their organization.
正如弗雷德·卡普蘭（Fred Kaplan）的著作“叛亂分子”（The Insurgents）所描述的那樣，當代著名的例子是大衛彼得雷烏斯將軍開創的美國軍事學說的變化。 在傳統戰爭中，戰斗的目的是打敗敵軍。 但彼得雷烏斯和他的盟友認為，在處理叛亂時，軍隊必須追求一個不同的，更廣泛的目標，以防止新的敵人出現 - 即讓民眾站在一邊，從而消除新兵和其他形式的當地人 支持在該地區開展活動所需的叛亂活動。 這種方法最終被軍方采用 - 因為一小群流氓思想家自己質疑他們組織的預定義和長期目標。
CONCLUSION?
Powerful as reframing can be, it takes time and practice to get good at it. One senior executive from the defense industry told me, I was shocked by how difficult it is to reframe problems, but also how effective it is. As you start to work more with the method, urge your team to trust the process, and be prepared for it to feel messy and confusing at times.
結論:盡管重構功能強大，但要想精通它需要時間和實踐。一位來自國防工業的高級管理人員告訴我，我震驚于重新定義問題是多么困難，但它是多么有效。當您開始更多地使用這個方法時，請敦促您的團隊信任這個過程，并準備好讓它有時感到混亂和困惑。
In leading more and more reframing discussions, you may also be tempted to create a diagnostic checklist. I strongly caution you against that or at least against making the checklist evident to the group you re engaging with. A checklist for problem diagnosis tends to discourage actual thinking, which of course defeats the very purpose of engaging in reframing. As Neil Gaiman reminds us in The Sandman, tools can be the subtlest of traps.
在引導越來越多的重新構建討論時，您可能還想創建一個診斷清單。我強烈警告你不要這樣做，或者至少不要讓你的團隊明顯地看到你的清單。用于問題診斷的檢查表往往會阻礙實際的思考，這當然違背了重新構建的目的。正如尼爾?蓋曼(Neil Gaiman)在《睡魔》(The Sandman)中提醒我們的那樣，工具可能是陷阱中最微妙的。
Finally, combine reframing with real-world testing. The method is ultimately limited by the knowledge and perspectives of the people in the room and as Steve Blank, of Stanford, and others have repeatedly shown, it is fatal to think you can figure it all out within the comfy confines of your own office. The next time you face a problem, start by reframing it but don t wait too long before getting out of the building to observe your customers and prototype your ideas. It is neither thinking nor testing alone, but a marriage of the two, that holds the key to radically better results.
最后，將重構與實際測試結合起來。這種方法最終會受到房間里人們的知識和觀點的限制，正如斯坦福大學的史蒂夫?布蘭克(Steve Blank)和其他人反復證明的那樣，認為自己可以在自己舒適的辦公室里把所有問題都解決，這是致命的。下次你遇到問題的時候，從重新設計開始，但不要等太久才走出大樓去觀察你的客戶，并把你的想法變成原型。要想取得更好的結果，關鍵不在于思考，也不在于測試，而在于兩者的結合。
