Bai 1.3

Two general categories of problems and
problem solving. Analytical Problem Solving is
one way to look at problems. Another one there's
Creative Problem Solving. Analytical problem solving
has a right answer and looking at this,
looking at these kinds of problems, it's usually systematic the way that
we work through an analytical problem. For example, what's the answer here? 2 plus 6 plus 4, 12. There's not a number of different
answers unless maybe you're in, in, astrophysics somehow maybe we could
figure out some different answer. But, you know, for
normal humans, you know, if you're not hawking then you're probably
going to end up with the answer of 12. There are four methods for doing this,
there are a number of methods but four we'll take a look
at that are common ones. One is Root cause analysis, very systematic approach
to looking at a problem. One is Matrix decision analysis,
another systematic way of looking at this. Another one is a Decision tree with a very
systematic way of looking a things. And one is a Precedence chart,
which things come first, second, third another systematic
way to look at things. Root cause analysis,
there's some different categories. What we do is say in category one,
two, three, four, what are the causes of
the problem under this category? So one category might be
something mechanical. Your car won't start, so we say something
under there that might be mechanical is, gee, I have bad spark plug wires or my battery's dead or
the starter has gone bad. So we have a number of different
possible causes for that. Another thing could be we've
flooded the engine in the car because we don't really know
how to start a car very well. We made another category that says people,
people issues. Well you may have somebody
like a brother in law that drives your in-law's car occasionally. And whenever they go out to start it,
they can't start it, so they're always calling you to come
over and start the car for them. You can't figure out why your
brother-in-law can't start the car, you just figure my
brother-in-law is an idiot. So it's a person issue, so these
categories start to divide out causes for our problem into different areas. And this is why we look at causes,
get rid of the cause, the problem ends up going away. As we start examining this
we finally find out oh, your brother-in-law is using
a different car key than you are. Oh, there's a little electronic
chip in every single car key. Oh, the electronic chip in
his car key has gone bad and the car won't recognize his key and
so it won't let him start the car. So, when you go over with your key and
put it in and start the car, of course it starts. Everybody thought he was an idiot. No, it's a mechanical problem. You get the key fixed and then even
your brother-in-law can start the car. So we look at different problems for
causes to get rid of the final problem. Matrix decisions, we're going to look at, at things we can do, how we can work
together to make these things happen. And we're going to see if there's some
kind of, of correlation between things, who's gonna do things,
how are people going to do things. So we'll end up with a decision
matrix analysis to say okay, this is what's gonna go on here. This person's gonna do this. This person will do that and
we'll get things accomplished finally. We're going to look at a decision
tree that's another systematic way of doing things. We have some kind of
a decision we need to make. We have option a and option b. Option a has some different
possible outcomes. We even have a subheading
under option a and that is two different possible outcomes. Under b, again,
we have a number of different outcomes. So we have our possible outcomes. What do we do with this? We're going to prioritize these and
figure out which is the best outcome. So a number of different tools to help
us in our decision-making process. Precedence chart is another one of these. This just says, okay,
how in the world do we solve this problem? What we're going to do is solve
this problem as we start off. What do we need to get done,
the purpose of this? What are the means we're
going to use to get there and then we get down to specific tasks. What are the things we have to do? So we get into some of the consequences
we were talking about, oh, you mean I have to do this and
and this and this and then that will finally
reach the goal over here. So, another way to affect
problem solving along the way. Let's look at creative problem solving. We just looked at
analytical problem solving. I'm just going to tell you a quick story
about a couple that makes decisions. The husband, very analytical and
every time he solves a problem, he will put all kinds of charts and
graphs together, you know, analyze a lot of things,
gather a lot of data. Put everything together in some systematic
format, go through step by step and solve the problem and
does a fairly good job most of the time. His wife doesn't do it that way. She does creative problem solving. She just thinks about problems. And somehow manages to think about all
the different aspects kind of all at the same time in her head and
comes up with a solution to the problem. And oddly enough she is
right 97 times out of 100. She comes up with the best solution. He comes up with the best
solution occasionally. She comes up with the best
solution almost always. It doesn't always work that way. Systematic analytical problem
solving is a great way to do things. So is creative problem solving. What do we learn in school? We learn analytical problem solving. Creative problem solving,
let's look at an example. There's no right answer and we just are going to look at,
look for some useful answers. What's the best answer? When we get done with this, we put
a solution in place out in the real world, things went right. We did the right, we did the right thing,
we picked the best answer. Let's take a look at this. This comes from a book from Von Oech, which you might wanna
take a look at some time. It's just kind of a fun book,
a whack on the side of the head. We have five choices here. Which one of these. You just need to decide now. Take a look at this. Which one of these, which one of these shapes does
not belong with the other shapes. Give you just a moment to look at that. And it doesn't take you long to do
that I'm sure a lot of you were just like [SOUND] that one right there. Okay, so if you picked A, you are correct. All right, so if you picked A,
you're correct. It's the only one that has part of the
shape internal to the rest of the shape. Anybody pick B? Okay, great you're right. It's the only one that has a straight and
curved side. C, correct, it's the only one
that has all straight sides. D, hey, correct, it's the only one with no point of
discontinuity, it's a perfect circle. E, I really like this one a lot maybe
some of you picked this one if you did, good job. It's the only one that depicts
a non-Euclidean triangle into Euclidean space so good job on that one. The idea being that when we look at these,
there's no right or wrong answer. A lot of times you find in the business
world there is no right or wrong answer. The organization that comes up with
the best solution to a problem is quite often the one that gets
an edge in the marketplace. There are numbers and numbers and numbers of stories about organizations who
solve problems and can do something like increase their quality over a competitor
to get an edge in the marketplace. They get things out the door
faster than their competitor. You get an edge in the marketplace. They can hit a better price point and
still make a good profit. They get an edge of over
somebody else in the marketplace. So looking at answers,
there's not a right or wrong answer. It proves itself out in the real world
eventually, did we pick the best answer?

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Bai 1.2

This module,
we'll discuss problem-solving. Decision making,
we're going to talk about in module three. Now we're going to have
a knowledge check for you. So take a look at that and we'll be back. Module one, lecture two. Let's Start with Types of Problems. A lot of this comes from Problem-Solving:
The Owner's Manual by Pierce Howard. Great book, you should take a look at that
one. There are couple of other books that we'll refer to as well through here. Problems for which solutions are unknown. So we have different kinds of problems. Sometimes, we have no idea
what the solution is. We have to find that out. We also have problems that have solutions, we just don't know which is
going to be the best one. It's not obvious to us,
which the best solution is. Problems with solutions
that have unknown results. Problems where the cause is unknown and
must be discovered. Sometimes, if we find out what
the cause of the problem is, then we can figure out how
to deal with this problem. We just get rid of the cause,
the problem goes away. Sometimes, the cause doesn't
make any difference at all. It's unknown or irrelevant. If we're talking about peace in
the Middle East, the original cause for some of the conflict,
really irrelevant and it's a little muddy about
what it really was all about. We just know that now
we have to solve this. We have problems where
solutions are known, but we don't know which one's the best one. Sometimes, these are very difficult
kinds of problems to, to solve. We have solutions with certain outcomes. We have solutions with uncertain outcomes. And we have solutions that
need to be prioritized. Let's think a little bit
about looking at a new job. What solutions with uncertain outcomes? We know that we're going
to have a new job. We have two choices, choise A, choise B. Both of them are great jobs. They are both great opportunities. One of them means that we move to
the Northeast Coast of the United States. One of them means that we move to the
South Central part of the United States. Different size cities,
different types of work, different groups of
people we will work with. So we're trying to envision, what is
our daily life going to look like once we accept one of these jobs and go there. What does it look like in
the workplace everyday? What does it look like when I'm
out around in my new community? What is it going to look like when
I make new friends in these places? So we have a number of things to
look at and we we really don't know. We will find out when, when we get there. And eventually, find out,
yes, I'm really happy here. I love my work everyday. I love the people I work with. I love where I live, everything's great. I have a fantastic life. I made the right choice. Solutions with certain outcomes, we know
that there's this outcome, that outcome. We just evaluate,
which one is the best and solutions. Where we have a number
of different outcomes, we just need to prioritize those and
say none of these ten different things. The priority listing looks like this. This looks like the best. This looks like the next best. This looks like the next, next best. So we prioritize all of these. There are a number of prioritizing tools
when you're trying to do problem-solving. Look at different kinds of problems and
solutions. If we take a look at problems with
unknown causes, we just find the cause. If you're gonna look at problems
with unknown and irrelevant causes, where we just don't even
care about what they are. We just gather ideas
that can fix the problem. That's what we're looking for there. Decisions between solutions
with certain outcomes. Decide on one or the other,
all we need to do. And decisions where there are uncertain
outcomes, like we just discussed. We just have to figure out which one looks
the best out of these with a number of things we evaluate along the way. And then if we just tear this whole jumbo
list, we need to get this prioritized. What, what does this look like? What's my best choice? My second best choice? My third best choice?

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Bai 1.1

Welcome to Problem Solving and Decision Making brought to you by
the University of California, Irvine. I'm Rob Stone,
I've been doing problem solving and decision making my whole life
just like all the rest of you. We all do that on a daily basis,
we constantly do this. We do it well, we do it not so
well but we're always doing it. I've also been doing this in my
professional life for a number of years, how many we'll not actually point out but
a number of years in many organizations. I've worked with for
profit organizations not for profit organizations,
the government organizations. We're going to, in this class talk about
some of the tools, techniques, methods, processes that can help with problem
solving and decision making. I've applied those in organizations
that made decisions myself in various organizations, helped other people make
decisions, helped teams make decisions. So we'll be working with some of
the things that help us do that. So let's take a look at some of the
concepts involved with problem solving and decision making. We're going to talk about problem solving
and decision making in organizations. This is module one, lecture one. A decision, it's a choice. So we have to make a choice. It's what decision making is all about,
choosing. And the decision making
part of it is a process, so there's some steps you can go through or
we'll look at another way. You don't have to go through specific
steps some people just somehow make decisions along the way. This is a logical choice
from available options so this is a little biased because
it's from a business dictionary and it implies that we're going
to make good decisions. We don't have to make good decisions
we can make bad decisions as well but hopefully we'll make good decisions. We can make a bad choice or no choice and then we'll talk about making good
choices along the way, as well. We may have option one and option two. A bad choice would be to look at those and
not think about them and just pick one. An example of that, there was a person who needed to hire
a new staff member in their department. This person that was going to do
the hiring was the, the head of that whole department, the final decision maker,
the authority and everything. They put together a team of people
to help in the hiring process and they got this group of people to
interview different candidates and put recommendations together. There were list of prioritized people
that this group came back with to this final authority,
the final decision-maker. And then, this final decision-maker
looked at the list and said, I don't need this and threw it away. So, if they had a choice between
person one and person two, how are they going to make that choice? What they did was they said
I'm just going to pick that person over there because
they speak Italian. Speaking Italian had nothing to do
with working in this organization. Team work,
understanding various word processes, being able to work with customers,
those were all key skills and the person who was hired
had none of those. So when we're looking at some of the
choices we make if we don't think through these we might make a bad choice,
that was a terrible choice. Another thing we can do is say option one,
option two or no choice at all. When they say that at a certain point,
something will happen. Either option one is going to take
place or option two will take place I really don't know what to do and
I don't really wanna make a decision. So I think I'll just let things go on
their own and see what happens and make no choice at all. So actually you are making a choice
which ever one is the strongest and is the one that's going to actually
become the end result is your choice. You decided not to do anything, therefore something's going to happen and
it may not be the best thing. Let's look at how we might
decide to paint new cars. So we have choice one and
choice two for paining new cars. One organization did a great job be,
between choice one and choice two, option one and option two. We had a group of engineers,
two groups of engineers. One group of engineers says, this is
the best way to paint these new cars. Another group of engineers says, this is
the best way to paint these new cars. The CEO of this car company,
all of you know this car company, many of you have cars
made by this company. The CEO finally had to make the decision
because the engineers were just like this, they couldn't make the decision
of choice one,or choice two. Nobody else could figure out how to
make this choice they went to the CEO. Both groups of engineers put together
great logical arguments on why the CEO should pick this way to paint the cars
instead of this way to paint the cars. The CEO surprised them,
got all the engineers together and said okay let's figure out how
we're going to paint the cars. Said I just have one question for
each group. Please tell me which method of
painting these cars will not work? And all of the engineers in unison said,
well both ways work just fine. He said, choice two, option two that's
the way we're gonna paint them and left. Perfectly good information
to make a good decision. Both of them worked fine. Didn't really make any
difference which way it went. It's not what the engineers were expecting
for evaluation but it worked out fine. Method A, method B, let's just pick B. Decision Making, The Ultimate Guide. This is a text that you
might wanna refer to and we're gonna use some slides
from this text along the way. There are three key elements in
the process of making a decision. Know your purpose. Why are you even trying
to make this decisions? What do you wanna get
out of this decision? Sometimes we don't have any
idea why we're even bothering. So what's the purpose of this whole thing? Understand your biases. We all have some biases that we
just carry around with us and we will tend to lean toward the ways
we kind of like to do things that may not always be the best way to do things
and consider different consequences. It's easy to make a decision sometimes,
like a New Year's resolution and then not think about the consequences. Oh, you mean I have to do that I
didn't know that was involved. So we'll talk a little bit about them. Let's take a look at an example. You have a purpose, you wanna have $1 million in
accessible assets before you retire. And that's a number that's
not all that unattainable for most people that are under 30 years old. You can probably put that money away and reach that goal but you're gonna have
to do some things to make that happen. Understand your biases, legal
considerations and ethical considerations. Legal considerations, there was a, famous
series on recently called Breaking Bad, one teacher decided that they
wanted to make more money. And so they decided the best way to
do that was to do something illegal. So we may have some legal considerations,
are we going to go that path? Hm, no,
we're just gonna go the normal path and amass our million dollars by
retirement through normal means. Ethical considerations,
sometimes we think about, are there some certain things I
don't wanna be involved with? Do I wanna be involved with companies
that do chemical testing on animals? Do I wanna be involved with companies
that make weapons for warfare? You know, there's some different ethical
considerations we might wanna make along the way and then that'll, that'll take
some of our options away from us. Also, now we have our options left over
we're going to think through those. Consequences, what are some of
the consequences of amassing this amount of money by retirement? Well, we just might have to keep our
car a few extra years, you know, instead of getting a brand new
car every three or four years. Well, now it's maybe every eight or
ten years. We might just buy a car that's not
the fanciest style right now but it gets us around just fine. A lot of cars last 250,000 miles
easily these years or these days. So, we don't have to get a new car all
the time except for just a stylish reason. We might not purchase some fancy
new item like we might not purchase some fancy new brand name,
designer watch of some sort. We might not take a fancy vacation
every year it might be every two or three years and
then we can go on a nice vacation. We don't have to cut out everything
we're going to do in our lives to get our goal of having a certain amount
of money by the time we retire. But we may have to cut
back on some things there are some consequences to what we're doing. Problem, problem is a gap or
it's some kind of a change. There's something not right in the way
that we usually understand things. Look at an example of a problem. You're gaining weight because you eat
badly and you don't exercise enough. Well, I don't know how many
of you have that problem but I have that problem from time to time,
many of us do. The exercise method that you choose
just doesn't work well for you. If you decide that you wanna go run and
you start running and you can get in usually three or
four miles a week. And then you realize oh, that's not enough to see any kind of,
weight difference at all. I'm gonna have to run at least 25 miles a
week, I don't know how I'm gonna do that. I need to find a different
way of exercising. Problem solving,
process of working through all the details of a problem to
reach some kind of solution. So it's a process,
problem solving is a process and we do that in a couple of different ways.

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