Overall Outline of the Book
The book is structured into six parts, moving from the initial identification of a problem to the complex realization of whether a solution is actually desired. It uses whimsical, parabolic stories (fables) to illustrate the pitfalls of rushing into solutions without properly defining the problem first.
- Part 1: What is the problem? (Focuses on differences between expectations and perceptions).
- Part 2: What is the problem? (Focuses on how the method of solution often obscures the definition).
- Part 3: What is the problem, really? (Focuses on semantic levels and the "endless chain" of new problems caused by solutions).
- Part 4: Whose problem is it? (Focuses on stakeholders and political boundaries).
- Part 5: Where does it come from? (Focuses on the origins of problems, often bureaucracy or the solver themselves).
- Part 6: Do we really want to solve it? (Focuses on the unintended consequences of solutions).
Part 1: What is the problem?
This chapter introduces the classic "Elevator Problem" in the Brontosaurus Tower. Tenants in a high-rise office building complain that the elevator service is too slow.
- The Narrative: The tenants threaten to leave. The landlord, Mr. Diplodocus, considers various expensive engineering solutions: speeding up elevators, cutting new shafts, or staggering working hours.
- The Analysis: The authors list standard solutions which assume the problem is "slow elevators." They then switch perspectives to the landlord, whose solutions might include raising rents or burning down the building.
- Key Insight: This chapter establishes that we tend to rush into solutions before defining the problem. It introduces the shift from "Problem Solver" to "Solver of Problems," asking first: Who has a problem? and What is the essence of your problem?.
- The Narrative: The tenants try to communicate their dissatisfaction to the landlord. Peter Pigeonhole (a mailboy) organizes a petition, which the landlord refuses to read. The tenants escalate to picketing and stink bombs.
- The Resolution: Eventually, management, tenants, and the landlord meet. They realize they have different problems: The landlord hates harassment; the tenants hate the service; the employers hate the union threats. Peter is assigned to define the problem.
- Key Insight: The chapter illustrates the "Walking in the other person's moccasins" technique. It highlights that a problem usually involves multiple parties with conflicting definitions.
- The Narrative: Peter realizes a profound definition: A problem is a difference between things as desired and things as perceived.
- The Solution: Peter realizes he can solve the elevator problem by changing the perception of time rather than the actual time. He installs mirrors. People stop complaining because they are busy looking at themselves.
- The Complication: Graffiti appears on the mirrors. Peter counters by providing crayons (changing the problem again). Finally, tech engineers find a rat in the relay, fix the speed, and the mirrors are removed. This causes a new disaster: the elevators are so fast that everyone hits the subway at once, causing a crush that kills the landlord.
- The Postscript: Peter learns that you can sometimes "steal" capacity (elevator time) from a neighbor (the department store next door), but the landlord lacked the humor to see it.
- Key Lesson: Don't bother trying to solve problems for people who don't have a sense of humor.
Part 2: What is the problem?
- The Narrative: Executives need to determine the best combination of bids for 11 government properties among 4 companies. The rules are complex, creating 4,000,000 possible combinations. They hire Billy Brighteyes to program a computer to solve it.
- The "Solution": The other programmers struggle with the complexity. Billy reads the rules and solves it in 5 minutes using logic, realizing the rules simplify the choices dramatically.
- Key Lesson: Billy learns that you shouldn't take their solution method for a problem definition. Also, if you solve their problem too readily, they'll never believe you've solved their real problem.
- The Narrative: Years later, Billy meets an operations researcher who claims to have solved that same bidding problem.
- The Twist: The researcher didn't use logic; he used a standard linear programming "package" that cost $1,400 and took 3 days. He viewed the problem as "how to apply my tool."
- Key Lesson: Don't mistake a solution method for a problem definition—especially if it's your own solution method.
- The Narrative: Billy reflects on the bidding problem. He realizes that since the bids were "sealed" but obtained illegally by the clients, the real problem might have been a game of bluffing. If everyone was cheating, the initial problem definition (mathematical optimization) was wrong.
- The Philosophy: Billy realizes that you can never be absolutely sure you have the correct definition.
- Key Lesson: You can never be sure you have a correct definition, even after the problem is solved. But, Don't leap to conclusions, but don't ignore your first impression.
Part 3: What is the problem, really?
- The Narrative: An engineer, Dan Daring, creates a tool to mark computer paper. It works well but has sharp pins. When his boss sits on the desk where the tool is resting upside down, the boss gets punctured in the posterior.
- The "Endless Chain": They modify the tool with rounded legs so it can't stand upside down. This solves the "punctured boss" problem but likely creates new ones (e.g., people handling it differently).
- Key Lesson: Each solution is the source of the next problem. Also, If you can't think of at least three things that might be wrong with your understanding of the problem, you don't understand the problem.
- The Narrative: Discusses "misfits"—solutions that don't match the humans using them. Examples include razor blade disposal (leading to cut fingers until dispensers were invented) and speed limits.
- The Technique: To find misfits, we must view the familiar as strange. The authors suggest analyzing an object (like a book) from the perspective of a foreigner, a blind person, or a child.
- Key Lesson: Each new point of view will produce a new misfit.
- The Narrative: The authors present a simple circle and ask "What is it?" The answer depends on the context (semantic level). It could be a hole, a hoop, or a zero.
- The Experiment: Changing the phrasing from "familiar object" to "very unfamiliar object" stops people from answering. We naturally try to place problems on a semantic level where we feel comfortable solving them (e.g., a student interpreting an exam question based on what the professor wants rather than what the words say).
- Key Lesson: As you wander along the weary path of problem definition, check back home once in a while to see if you haven't lost your way.
- The Narrative: Analyzes the ambiguity of language. A sign saying "Nothing is too good for our customers" could mean "We give them the best" or "They deserve nothing".
- The Exercise: The authors use the sentence "Mary had a little lamb" to show how emphasizing different words completely changes the meaning (e.g., Mary had it, vs. Mary had (ate) it).
- Key Lesson: Once you have a problem statement in words, play with the words until the statement is in everyone's head. They provide a list of word games (change "and" to "or", "may" to "must") to test definitions.
Part 4: Whose problem is it?
- The Narrative: A teacher has a class where one student smokes cheap cigars, making everyone sick.
- The Analysis: Whose problem is it? The teacher (who is used to smoke) doesn't feel it. The smoker doesn't feel it. The non-smokers have the problem.
- The Solution: The students solve it themselves. They ask the smoker to stop, and in exchange, they all bring gourmet snacks to class. The teacher realizes that if he had mandated a "no smoking" rule, it would have created resentment.
- Key Lesson: Don't solve other people's problems when they can solve them perfectly well themselves. Also, If it's their problem, make it their problem.
- The Narrative: A university has a parking shortage. The President has a reserved spot; everyone else struggles.
- The Struggle: Students park in the President's spot and get ticketed. The President threatens expulsion. Students slash his tires.
- The Shift: Faculty members decide to treat the parking shortage as "My Problem" rather than the administration's problem. They realize they are too lazy to walk. They change their habits (walking for exercise, enjoying the scenery), effectively dissolving the problem for themselves.
- Key Lesson: Try blaming yourself for a change—even for a moment.
- The Narrative: A tunnel in Switzerland requires lights. At the end of the tunnel is a scenic overlook. Drivers stop to look at the view, leave their lights on, and return to dead batteries.
- The Solutions: The engineer considers complex solutions (charging stations, complex signs explaining day/night rules).
- The Final Solution: A simple sign that asks: ARE YOUR LIGHTS ON?. This covers all cases (day/night, on/off) by prompting the driver to check their status.
- Key Lesson: If people really have their lights on, a little reminder may be more effective than your complicated solution.
Part 5: Where does it come from?
- The Narrative: Janet tries to visit her grandmother in Poland. A bureaucrat refuses her visa because she has 7 copies of a form instead of 8.
- The Analysis: Janet fights the urge to blame "bureaucracy" or "Nature." She asks: Where does this problem come from?. Is the clerk incompetent? Is he looking for a bribe? Is he afraid of his boss?
- The Narrative: Janet changes her perspective. She realizes the problem might come from her treating the clerk as a robot. She introduces herself, learns his name (Jan Matczyszyn), and connects on a human level about their families.
- The Resolution: He helps her by using his own coin to run the copier for the 8th copy.
- Key Lesson: The source of the problem is most often within you.
- The Narrative: Discusses problems that originate from the "problem solvers" themselves (bureaucracy). A Dean sends a ridiculous memo about how to use commas.
- The Strategy: How to handle "make-work" problems?
- The Solution: "The Mirror." Send the problem back. Scribble "Fascinating concept. Let's discuss" and route it back. Eventually, the make-worker gets credit, but you do no work.
- Key Lesson: In the valley of the problem solvers, the problem creator is king, or president, or dean. The source of the problem is often the person generating the paperwork.
- The Narrative: Discusses school exams. Students learn to solve exams based on "where they come from" (the professor's habits) rather than the content.
- The Analysis: Exams are "puzzles" (difficult by design) not "problems" (natural difficulties). The authors show a multiple-choice question where the answer can be deduced purely by the pattern of the numbers, without knowing the question.
- Key Lesson: Who sent this problem? What's he trying to do to me? Understanding the source helps differentiate between a puzzle (designed to trick you) and a real problem.
Part 6: Do we really want to solve it?
- The Narrative: Tom, an enthusiastic programmer, visits Tanglelang Toys. They have a distribution problem: 3 factories, various shipping costs. They want to minimize costs.
- The Analysis: Tom calculates that closing two factories and using only the most modern one is cheaper than the current setup.
- The Rejection: The executives reject the solution because the President lives near one old factory and the Chairman near the other. They won't move. They only wanted the computer study to "prove" to the bosses that they should close the plants; when the computer proved it, the executives admitted the bosses still wouldn't listen.
- Key Lesson: In spite of appearances, people seldom know what they want until you give them what they ask for.
- The Narrative: Patience Prudent is programming a tax assessment system. The Treasurer rejects the program because of a rounding error of one penny in $13 million. He claims he must follow the law "to the penny".
- The Confrontation: Patience realizes he is sabotaging the project because he doesn't want the computer to take over his job. She gives him a dollar bill to cover the "rounding errors" for the next decade and walks out.
- Key Lesson: Not too many people, in the final analysis, really want their problems solved.
- The Narrative: A code-breaker spends two years cracking a diplomatic code (JACTITATION). He discovers the code is based on a Dorothy Sayers novel.
- The Result: He decodes the messages and finds they are all expense accounts. He quits the intelligence business.
- The Conclusion: The book ends with the story of the Fisherman's Wife (using wishes foolishly). We often chase solutions we don't actually want, or that bring consequences (side effects) we didn't foresee (like the universal solvent dissolving its container).
- Key Lesson: We never have enough time to consider whether we want it, but we always have enough time to regret it. To thine own self be true.